Week 3 Period: Control authority

The limits the flight control system enforces, what it will refuse to let you do, and who is actually in command

8 March 2027

Before you arrive#

Your account from week 2 of a flight control system surprising its pilot, and your verdict on whether it was wrong.

In this period#

Pull the stick fully aft at speed and the aircraft gives you nine G and not one more. Ask for more angle of attack than the limiter allows and the nose stops coming up. That is not a fault overriding you — it is the system declining the request.

The limiter exists because the airframe has a structural life and you have a physiology, and both have numbers. It is also present at moments when a pilot would rather it were not, which is the week’s central awkwardness.

We separate two things students routinely collapse together:

• a limit is enforced. The aircraft will not do it. You do not need to remember it under load, because the system remembers for you.
• a restriction is written down. The aircraft will happily do it. Whether it happens is entirely a question of whether you decided not to.

Most of what kills people in this airframe is in the second category.

Afterwards#

List every restriction in the flight manual that the aircraft would let you break tomorrow. Bring the list to week 9. It will be shorter than you think and worse than you expect.