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4 Answers

Is Standard rate turn designed only for holding and partial panel?

Asked by: 3749 views Instrument Rating

In doing a Stage Check today, I had a student constantly exceeding standard rate turns (up to 45 degrees of bank) to catch a course that he was about to overshoot. I critiqued him, and during the debrief I mentioned to his instructor that one should never go beyond standard rate turns on an IFR flight plan. His instructor disagreed with me. Saying that there is nothing limiting IFR turns to standard rate. Although I disagreed, I could not find a source to back me up. I personally believe its not wise to exceed it, especially in partial panel situations.  But legally speaking, is this allowed? What does ATC think about it? Anyone know of a source I can reference? Thanks!

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4 Answers



  1. Wes Beard on Oct 25, 2013

    In the Instrument Flying Handbook. Page 7-7. The book talks about keeping a standard rate turn and excessive bank requires precision and will possibly overbank.

    If the instructor teaches the primary secondary method the turn coordinator us primary once the bank is established. How can the pilot use the turn coordinator with a 45 degree turn?

    Even in the control performance method, the turn coordinator is used to backup what the attitude indicator is saying. An excessive bank will not allow that to happen.

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  2. Bob Watson on Oct 25, 2013

    There’s nothing limiting the bank angle except, maybe, the desire not to lose control and fall out of the clouds. While it might be legal and the instructor might be proficient enough to fly steep bank angle in IMC, that doesn’t mean it’s a good habit to encourage. Under the hood, it’s easy to get some peeks and minimize the sense of vertigo, but in the soup, upside down or right-side up all looks the same. Add in a dying AI and you’re inviting all sorts of trouble.

    Does the instructor have much time in actual IMC? Those habits will bite you in the hindquarters if you carry them into IMC with any sort of turbulence/wind/icing (stall speed), or any of the other conditions waiting for you in the soup.

    To continue with what Wes said, if you fly standard rate turns, you have lots of cross-checks and you’re not upsetting the equilibrium of level flight, too much. By doing lots of yanking and banking, you lose all those cross-checks and upset the trimmed configuration much more. If an instrument starts to fade out in flight, or you’ve picked up a little ice, or you hit a up/down draft, you’re less likely to realize it until you’re in some unusual attitude. If that happens in the soup, you’re just a minute or so away from becoming a statistic.

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  3. Kris Kortokrax on Oct 25, 2013

    If one is flying an airplane at 300 knots, a 45 degree bank would be a standard rate turn.
    If one needs to correct a heading error of 5 degrees at 100 knots, a standard rate turn of 15 degrees bank would be excessive.

    Everything is relative.

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  4. Bob Watson on Oct 26, 2013

    WRT the original post, I think that it’s a bad practice to encourage steep banks and any other abrupt or extreme maneuvers to correct. If you overshoot a course, you should fly a course to return to it without an extreme bank (extreme being relative as Kris observes) AND you should plan ahead better the next time. While extreme maneuvering might not be specifically prohibited (91.13 notwithstanding), it seems to me like a very bad habit to teach a new instrument student.

    I can only imagine what a DPE would think of the the type of error correction strategy described above.

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