The Most Misunderstood Number in Aviation: Angle of Attack and the Stall

Ask a non-pilot what makes an airplane stall and the answer is usually "it went too slow." It is one of aviation's most persistent and dangerous misconceptions. A wing stalls when it exceeds its critical angle of attack — the angle between the wing and the oncoming air — and that can happen at any airspeed and any attitude, including at high speed in a steep turn. Angle of attack is not the same as the airplane's pitch or its climb angle. It is specifically how the wing meets the air flowing over it. As that angle increases, lift increases — up to a point. Past the critical angle, typically somewhere around 15 to 18 degrees for many wings, the smooth airflow over the top of the wing separates into turbulent eddies, lift collapses, and drag rises sharply. The wing is stalled. Recovery is conceptually simple and the same every time: reduce the angle of attack by lowering the nose, restoring smooth airflow, then recover from the descent. The reason the "too slow" myth is dangerous is that it teaches pilots to watch the wrong instrument. An aircraft can stall while the airspeed indicator reads a healthy number — for instance when a pilot hauls back on the controls in a tight, low-altitude turn from base to final, loading the wing and driving up the angle of attack. Accident records are full of these stall-spin events close to the ground. This is why modern training emphasizes angle of attack directly, why many aircraft now carry AoA indicators, and why the FAA's Airplane Flying Handbook and Pilot's Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge treat the concept as foundational. The wing does not care how fast it is going. It cares about the angle at which it meets the wind.