RIGHT SEAT RULES NO.24 SLIPPING IT IN

What a graceful thing a sideslip is. When you watch an aeroplane slip gently onto the very threshold of a grass field and straighten out just before the wheels brush the turf, you know you are looking at an aviator - not an aeroplane driver.

- JIM DAVIS

THIS ARTICLE IS FOR INSTRUCTORS who want to teach their pupils to be aviators. If you already have this skill, then quietly turn the page, this is not for you. I want to encourage fresh pilots to feel safe and comfortable sideslipping right down to the ground – which is where it’s most useful.

Actually, that’s not quite true – it would also be useful if your engine caught fire at 8000 feet. You could then sideslip to blow the smoke and flames out to one side while helping you to get down quicker.

So what exactly is a sideslip? Here’s what it looks like from above. It’s a way of creating more drag so that you can descend steeply without increasing your airspeed. It’s simple – if you make the aeroplane go sideways it gets all draggy, which means you can come down rapidly while keeping the airspeed low. And you make it draggy by crossing the controls so that the rudder tries to turn you say to the right, and ailerons fight the turn by banking you to the left. This way the aircraft descends crabwise – it’s not going where it’s pointing. Let’s have a closer look at what’s going on. This aircraft has a heading of about 020 but it’s tracking north. The pilot is using right rudder and holding the left wing down with aileron.

For the most part, sideslipping is a low-level thing with two very useful purposes:

1. It can help you adjust your rate of descent during a glide approach or forced landing. That’s how the pilots of the famous ‘Gimli Glider’ managed to glide their out-of-fuel Boeing 767 onto an old airfield being used as a race track. (It helped that the Captain was also a qualified glider pilot.) Here is a link to the Gimli Glider.