In aviation, the lawn dart effect occurs when

fighter aircraft Fighter aircraft are fixed-wing military aircraft designed primarily for air-to-air combat. In military conflict, the role of fighter aircraft is to establish air superiority of the battlespace. Domination of the airspace above a battlefield ...

pilots accelerate horizontally at more than 1

standard gravity The standard acceleration due to gravity (or standard acceleration of free fall), sometimes abbreviated as standard gravity, usually denoted by or , is the nominal gravitational acceleration of an object in a vacuum near the surface of the Earth. ...

. The effect occurs when such extreme stimulation to the

vestibular system The vestibular system, in vertebrates, is a sensory system that creates the sense of balance and spatial orientation for the purpose of coordinating movement with balance. Together with the cochlea, a part of the auditory system, it constitutes ...

leads to the perception that the aircraft is climbing, prompting the pilot to lower the aircraft's pitch attitude, or drop the nose.

References

Perception Airspeed {{psych-stub

See also

References