Aerodynamics Practice Test

Static stability describes the initial reaction of an aircraft to a small disturbance in attitude. After a slight change, the sign of the initial moment determines how the aircraft responds. If the aircraft tends to return to its original attitude, that’s positive static stability. If it tends to stay in the new attitude, there is no immediate restoring or opposing tendency, which is neutral static stability. If it tends to move further away from the original attitude, that’s negative static stability. The description “initial tendency to remain in a new condition after disturbance” matches neutral static stability, since the disturbance leaves the aircraft in the new state without a restoring or diverging moment. Dynamic stability, by contrast, concerns how the motion evolves over time (whether oscillations damp out or grow).