Plain English Meaning

When the aircraft speeds up or slows down quickly, your inner ear can mistake that change in speed for a change in pitch. A fast acceleration feels like the nose has pitched up, and a fast slowdown feels like the nose has pitched down -- even when the aircraft is flying level.

Full Definition

A vestibular illusion in which rapid forward acceleration is falsely sensed as a nose-up pitch attitude, or rapid deceleration is falsely sensed as a nose-down pitch attitude. The illusion occurs because the inner ear's otolith organs cannot distinguish the force of linear acceleration from the force of gravity, so the brain interprets the combined force as a tilt of the body relative to the .