Whether you are conscious of it or not, your airplane has a certain inherent stability. It’s born with it—designed in by the aircraft’s engineers. In aviation, nothing is free, and that’s certainly true of aircraft control. Generally, to make an airplane more maneuverable, the designer must make it less stable. Some have gone so far as to require computers on board (called stability augmentation systems, or fly-by-wire) to maintain controlled flight. But since we’re flying to eat burgers and not drop bombs, we want our airplanes more stable than highly maneuverable.
Each of the three axes has two different measurements of stability—static and dynamic. Static stability is the airplane’s initial tendency upon an upset. Say you pitch up hard and let go of the controls. What happens in the next few seconds is considered the airplane’s static stability, while its condition over time is considered dynamic. Stability is described in both cases by saying it's one of three states: positive, neutral, or negative.
