Training and Safety Tip: Crosswind-correct

Then you look over and see the windsock pointing in some crazy direction. And you remember that your instructor told you something about... ailerons...? Elevator? Hmmm... what was that again?

Wind can be good, for example, when you are pointing your aircraft into it and about to take off. But it can be very bad, too.

Learning to take off and land in crosswinds is, of course, a critically important pilot skill. Perfecting the correct technique for taxiing in a crosswind shows true mastery of the airplane.

The best mantra to remember while in a typical tricycle gear aircraft is “turn in, dive away.” Your elevator and ailerons both play a role in keeping wheels on pavement. Remember, the goal here is to prevent a gust of wind from inadvertently flipping your aircraft.

Let’s look at what you do if you’re encountering a headwind. When taxiing with a quartering headwind, you want to avoid the wind lifting the wing on the side of the airplane from which the wind is blowing. That’s why you want the aileron up on that side—to reduce the area of the wing exposed to the wind. (Which points the aileron on the other side of the airplane down.) So, you turn the yoke into the wind. (A good way to remember this is that when you turn the yoke, your thumbs, which point straight up when the yoke is level, will be pointing in the direction of the aileron that is up.) The elevator should remain neutral in tricycle-gear aircraft. That’s “turning in.”

Tailwheel pilots taxiing into a headwind should add back-pressure on the stick, deflecting the elevator up into a straight headwind, while simultaneously deflecting the ailerons to "climb into" a quartering headwind on the ground. In a very strong headwind, the tailwheel pilot may want to reduce the back pressure, but otherwise full-aft stick is the default position when taxiing into a headwind.

If you have a tailwind, and either flavor of landing gear, dive away. The elevator should be held in the nose-down position, “diving” away from the wind, and the aileron should be down on the side of the aircraft from which the wind is blowing, which creates the “away” component of “dive away.” (Your thumbs on a yoke will point in the opposite direction of where the wind is coming from, right?)

“Since the wind is striking the airplane from behind, these control positions reduce the tendency of the wind to get under the tail and the wing and to nose the airplane over,” the FAA’s Airplane Flying Handbook says wisely in Chapter 2, starting on page 2-19.

So, here is the moral of this story: When taxiing in a crosswind, turn in and dive away. Like any good aviation axiom, repeat that three times and it will become instinct, and seared into your brain for life.