Definition
FAA Advisory Circular 120-109, titled 'Stall Prevention and Recovery Training,' as amended by its current revision. It provides FAA guidance on best practices for training pilots to recognize, prevent, and recover from stalls, including the emphasis on reducing angle of attack as the primary recovery action rather than minimizing altitude loss.
Plain English
An FAA guidance document that explains how stall training should be taught, with the main message being: when an airplane stalls, the first and most important step is to lower the nose to reduce the wing's angle of attack — recovering from the stall comes before worrying about how much altitude you lose.
Context Anchor
Seen in FAA handbook references when the text points the reader to more detailed FAA guidance on stall prevention and recovery training.
Derivation
An Advisory Circular (AC) is a non-regulatory FAA publication used to give guidance, recommendations, and accepted methods for complying with regulations. The number 120-109 identifies the specific document, and 'as revised' simply means whichever version is currently in force.
Why Pilots Care
Following its recommendations helps pilots build the skills needed to avoid loss-of-control accidents during training and flight operations.
Intuition Check
Do not read “Advisory Circular” as casual advice that can be ignored. It is not a regulation by itself, but it is official FAA guidance and is often used to show an accepted way to meet aviation safety expectations.
Example Sentence 1
The instructor explained that the school's stall recovery procedure was updated to align with AC 120-109, emphasizing nose-down inputs before adding power.
Example Sentence 2
Chapter 5 closes by noting that AC 120-109 (as revised) expands on the handbook's basic stall recovery procedures.