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Safety by Design

What is Flight Envelope Protection?

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Flight envelope protection is an error tolerance feature of many aircraft that prevent a pilot from pushing the aircraft beyond its structural and aerodynamic limits.

Benefits

Flight envelope protection may allow a pilot to respond quickly to fast moving situations without worrying about pushing an aircraft too far. For example, a pilot might want to climb quickly to avoid something. Flight envelope protection might prevent the pilot from stalling the aircraft with a steep angle of attack.

Risks

There are examples in aviation history of pilots successfully pushing an aircraft beyond its flight envelope in order to prevent an accident. This becomes impossible with flight envelope protection. Other risks include malfunctioning of the flight envelope protection itself. Pilots may become accustomed to the characteristics of flight envelope protection and be more prone to mistakes if it shuts down due to factors such as damaged measurement instruments.
Overview: Flight Envelope Protection
Type
Safety by Design
Definition
A system that prevents pilots from pushing an aircraft beyond its structural and aerodynamic limits.
Value
Human-error prevention
Allows pilots to react quickly without need to calculate operational limits.
Related Concepts

Safety Design

This is the complete list of articles we have written about safety design.
Active Safety
Defensive Design
Derating
Error Tolerance
Fail-safe
Graceful Degradation
Mistake Proofing
Moving Parts
Passive Risk
Passive Safety
Reliability Engineering
Residual Risk
Safety Controls
Safety Needs
Secondary Risk
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