Nearly stalled on takeoff after just 3 hours training on a PPL. Is this normal?

Question

I'm doing a PPL in the UK at an established flying school. The aircraft I'm training in is a Cessna 150.

Aside from a 1 hour introductory flying experience I have logged just 3 hours of flying with a qualified instructor.

The lessons I've had so far have covered basic flying controls, how to "book out" the aircraft, perform a walk around, and going through the pre-flight checklist.

During my last lesson I spoke to ATC for the first time to obtain clearance. My instructor told me what to say and allowed me to practice it first.

He then said he wanted me to perform the take off.

I was surprised and asked him to clarify this since I didn't think this would be normal after only 3 hours of training. After we had lined the aircraft up on the runway he instructed me to pull back on the yoke when the ASI reached a certain speed (I can't remember what the speed was but from memory around 70 kts). For reference I was in the left seat; instructor was in the right.

I waited for the ASI to reach the agreed speed and then pulled back. We left the ground but my instinct - bearing in mind I'd never done this before - was to pull back harder than I needed to. My instructor very quickly told me he had the controls. To which I repeated "you have control" as per the manual I've been given.

His reactions were extremely quick and he corrected whatever I had done.

I don't know exactly what happened and felt embarrassed about asking afterwards. I imagine I nearly stalled the plane on take off.

My instructor is a former commercial airline pilot for a major UK airline. As I mentioned the flight school is well established and well respected.

The remainder of my lesson went ok. I was learning about PAT (Power Attitude Trim) which he said I did reasonably well at.

I haven't had any lessons since and felt a bit uncomfortable from the experience, which was a couple of weeks ago.

My questions for the community are:

1. Is it "normal" to be asked to perform a take off after just 3 hours of training?
2. What did the instructor to do recover what I'd done with the yoke? I presume he levelled off - but I'm unsure whether that's right given we couldn't have been more than around 100 ft in the air when he took control.
3. What advice would you give me going forward about dealing with this? Should I speak to my instructor and explain it made me uncomfortable? Or should I go as far as finding a new instructor?

Answer 1

It is normal for student pilots to be introduced to all phases of flight, and there's nothing inherently wrong with introducing you to take off after 3 hours of instruction - this is a dual control aircraft and I assure you the instructor was fully prepared to take control. I also pretty much guarantee you that he was fully expecting you to put in more input than was needed.

To "recover" all they would have done was lower the nose - remember what you learned later in the lesson about power & attitude. By lowering the nose, it would have increased the speed.

Absolutely you should speak to your instructor about this, and they probably should have talked through it in a debrief after the lesson. If they did anything "wrong" here, it is not briefing you on the ground about what was going to take place, and what to expect.

Don't worry too much about this though, you are 3 hours in and you have plenty of time and space to learn.

---

For what it's worth, I did much of my PPL(A) training in the UK and I just went back to check my logbook. Take off and climb to downwind is Exercise 12. The first time I did that was about 8 hours into training. Your instructor clearly had more confidence in you than mine had in me! In my recollection, I did take off with the instructor "following through" on the controls before that - but the official introduction of that exercise was on my 6th flight.

Answer 2

Proper training involves as much educational preparation before attempting a task as possible

you do not want to learn to fly aircraft by trial and error

Firstly, it's the instructors job to save the situation. That's their job.

You should feel good about one thing: yielding control quickly without argument.

$You$ $did$ $that$ $right!$.

Though it may comfort you to know that none other than test pilot Hanna Reitsch did this in early glider training$^1$, yanking the stick hard is an instinct that must be overcome in training.

pulling the stick too hard can cause the aircraft to stall

This is why your instructor most likely pushed the stick forward to lower angle of attack and to maintain airspeed. Also, more rudder may have been applied to help hold the aircraft straight against engine/prop "p factors"$^2$.

it is normal to get "saved" in flight training several times

But it is up to you to explain to your instructor that this approach made you feel very uncomfortable, but don't hold back from asking questions about what happened.

One last word of advice: since lift is proportional to the square of airspeed, if you rotated at 70 knots and your 150 stalls at 50 knots there was no need to yank the stick at all.

review trimming for takeoff with your instructor

$^1$ from the autobiography Fliegen-mein Leben

$^2$ you will be learning about these in training too.

Answer 3

There's nothing wrong with being introduced to takeoffs early on. I do think your instructor could stand to have briefed you better on it. The goal isn't to pull the airplane off the ground- you want to rotate it into a specific pitch attitude and wait for itself to lift off on its own.

pull back on the yoke when the ASI reached a certain speed (I can't remember what the speed was but from memory around 70 kts)

This should very much be a memory item. Learn this by heart before your next lesson. I like to verbalize it during the takeoff roll (something like "tach green, temp green, pressure green, airspeed alive, rotate at 50"). In the 150s I'm familiar with the rotation speed is 50 knots or a little higher if your ASI is in mph. 70 knots would be weird to say the least.

I don't know exactly what happened and felt embarrassed about asking afterwards. I imagine I nearly stalled the plane on take off.

You should ask. There's nothing to be embarrassed about in primary flight training and you should never let embarrassment get in the way of learning or safety.

It could be that you were on the path to stalling (if you were actually close you'd have heard the stall horn blaring). It's also possible that you almost struck the tail on the ground. In either case, your instructor was prepared to keep anything bad from happening.