There is a unique kind of destructive spiral that I'llcall "The Deadly Spiral" (TDS), although it's often referred to byother names, including Suicide Spiral, Death Spiral, Vicious Spiral, GraveyardSpiral. While pilot disorientation may sometimes be involved, the more commoncause is much simpler, as we'll see. Although this phenomenon has been with ussince Orville and Wilbur first did their thing, many pilots have a limitedunderstanding of why it occurs, how to avoid it, and how to recover from it.Wolfgang Langweische, author of the classic Stick and Rudder, once saidthat there are only a few dozen men in the whole world who fully understand anairplane's spiral behavior. While I don't claim to be one of those, it does seemto me that the time is ripe to discuss the things that are known about thisdeadly occurrence.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.avweb.com/features_old/the-deadly-spiral