Pitch Movement in an Airplane

Part of the Video Series How to Fly an Airplane

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Learn how to pitch an airplane in this free how to fly video.

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Video Transcript

Pitch Movement in an Airplane
Hi. I'm Dave Pressy with St. Charles Flying Service on behalf of Expert Village. We're going to talk about the way in which we move an airplane in flight. Unlike your earthbound vehicle an airplane can move in all three dimensions. This is accomplished by moving the control surfaces to change airplanes attitude. There are three axis about which an airplane moves. Pitch, roll and yaw. Pitch is the up and down movement of the nose. We can adjust the pitch of an aircraft by moving the control yoke forward and backward. Pulling back and forth in such a way moves the elevator, the horizontal hinge surface on the tail. Move the control yoke forward to lower the nose. Move it backward to raise it. An upward movement of the elevator causes the tail to be deflected downward, thus lifting the nose. A downward movement of the elevator raises the tail, thus lowering the nose. Pilots refer to this upward down movement of the nose as changing the aircrafts pitch attitude.

About the Expert

Expert: Dave Pressy has been a flight instructor in the St. Louis Area for over four years, and a pilot for more than seven years. He has accumulated nearly 1200 hours of flight time. Read More