Talk:Falling leaf

Page Contains Hazardous Information

Alright y'all. The most commonly used definition of "falling leaf" in the aviation community is not this, and if you try the maneuver described on this page in a non-spin-approved aircraft you may not be able to recover from the resulting spin. I'm not sure what the Wikipedia guidelines or tags are regarding hazardous and misleading information, but this should qualify. For now I'm going to at least tag the "Execution" section, but the entire article really needs a rewrite by a certified flight instructor.

The definition of a falling leaf maneuver, as used in flight training, is this: Keep the nose near the horizon, keep the wings level with gentle application of rudder, while descending in an extended-duration but otherwise normal poweroff stall.

The maneuver is used as a rudder control exercise. There are fragments of text in the article that mention that, but the article instead describes intentional and repeated spin entry control inputs, slamming the rudder to the stops, which are the direct opposite of fine rudder control.

The article is also full of internal contradictions, for instance these two sentences [bold added]: "The maneuver is performed by purposely stalling the airplane and then carefully using the rudder to try to hold the aircraft on a steady course. The falling leaf consists of a constant rotation about the yaw axis while continually changing the direction."

It gets worse: I stumbled across this article because I was using an LLM search tool to find "falling leaf" procedures after a flight instructor recommended the maneuver to me. I wanted to study ahead before our flight; the procedure is not normally described in aircraft manuals or formal flight training materials -- it's more a term of art in the aviation community. Instead of referencing a sane procedure, the LLM described an extreme, spin-inducing maneuver, referencing this article as its source.

Pasting some better sources here in preparation for a page cleanup:

https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/1998/october/flight-training-magazine/instructor-tips is relatively authoritative from the AOPA
https://skytrain.biz/f/for-most-the-falling-leaf-stall-is-a-demonstration-only discusses the informal nature of the body of knowledge around the technique
https://www.boldmethod.com/learn-to-fly/maneuvers/falling-leaf-stall-overcome-your-fears-and-learn-how-to-fly-them/ includes a video showing the sight picture over the nose -- no yaw movement, no spin-inducing rudder excursions

--Stevegt (talk) 20:58, 8 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Photos

Neither picture shows a spin, or falling leaf. The first looks like a fighter jet doing a missile avoidance procedure and is not an aircraft type that likely to ever be in this configuration anyway. The second shows an aircraft that is clearly in a spiral dive not a spin.

Sorry, but I'm not sure what you mean. Missile avoidance procedure? That seems seriously unlikely with the elevators at full back-stick and the throttle clearly off. The smoke flares used are not the same as the heat flares used for missile evasion, but they're used for showing the airflow produced by a moving object, such a wingtip vortices. They were obviously launched from a separate plane, or else the smoke would be behind, not ahead of and following the plane. You can just as easily do the maneuver in a fighter plane as you can a stunt plane, or a Cessna for that matter. It's a very good maneuver to learn. but each aircraft responds a little differently. (Very good for landing skills, especially when approaching in a slip or a crab.) I have no reason to doubt the photographer.

I am not sure what I am looking at with this picture, or how it is demonstrating a spin, if indeed it is. To be used it needs some explanation. I cannot reliably see where the elevators are or if it is powered on on not or its speed relative to a stall. I would have assumed that the flares were fired by the plane but I could be wrong, it is hard to tell where the smoke or the flares are in relation to the plane and if it has indeed just passed through the smoke then what is it telling us? This is not a practice I have heard of although I have seen a leading plane laying a smoke trail for the following plane to fly through. Those flares are hot and hard, if they really have been fired by another, and our plane is flying through them it looks unacceptably dangerous and completely unnecessary. Maybe a jet fighter can be spun this way, I haven't flown one, but I understood that they stall in quite a different way. Maybe what you say is all true, if it then I think it all needs more explanation. E x nihil ^(talk) 03:13, 12 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

As for the other photo, that is definitely a spin, which is distinctly different from a flat spin. A spiral dive, on the other hand, is a barrel roll in the purely vertical direction. It is much wider in diameter. A spin is more akin to a rudder roll in the vertical, but even tighter still in diameter. You can't pull a turn that tight in normal flight because the laws of physics forbid it. The plane will stall out. For example, compare these diagrams by some very reliable sources. Zaereth (talk) 01:36, 12 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I won't stand in your way but in that picture its doesn't look like the inside wing is stalled. I think we could find better ones that make it clear that it is not in a spiral dive. E x nihil ^(talk) 03:13, 12 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

A fighter stalls pretty much the same way any other plane stalls. The main difference is stability. Fighters are highly unstable, which provides good agility, but not at all stable in flight like a Cessna is. In a falling leaf, there is no developed spin. To an observer standing on the ground, there is no discernible spin at all. From the cockpit, there is a constant swaying motion from side to side, accompanied by rocking and a stomach-dropping slip to the side. During the maneuver, the nose should stay roughly 20 to 30 degrees from the projected flightpath.

If the throttle were on, the jet nozzle would e all lit up. To see the elevators, you may need to open the largest version of the file and try looking at it on a large screen. (I have mine on a 50 inch plasma TV.) Use of these smoke flares is quite common in the aeronautical industry. You can find many photos on the internet of planes flying through the smoke, from fighters to jumbo jets. The smoke pattern is quite different for a plane in flight as opposed to a falling plane. This is done because some things just cannot be simulated in a wind tunnel, and led to the development of air liners with those upward-bent wingtips. (It turns out a lot of energy is lost in the wingtip vortices, which show up well with smoke flares, and the bent wingtips help reduce them, so much that the millions of dollars it costs to convert to them pays for itself in just a few years.)

I'm not too worried about pictures. I just picked the only related photos that commons had on the subjects. If you think we need better ones, then we can wait until better ones come along. Zaereth (talk) 04:55, 12 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]