I am thinking of what I would do if I found myself as a passenger in a plane which gets into a spin and the PIC doesn’t know how to get out of it, or the type is believed to not recover from a spin.
Normally, AIUI, you cut the power, alierons neutral, opposite rudder, and push the stick all the way forward.
Why would that not work?
Some might say the best method is to not get into that aircraft in the first place, but that’s not the question 
… and after pushing the stick/yoke fwd you have to recover the plane from the resulting dive ;-)
I think this method should work for all aircraft we will fly, except that some don’t need much “forward stick” while others need a lot of it. If I remember correctly the C-152 didn’t need much pushing, but it’s been 20 years so I might have forgotten …
The PA38 did require a lot of pushing.
It is sometimes stated in flight manuals to move controls ‘briskly’ forward. Sometimes people seem very cautious when doing this and do it rather slowly. Will still work most of the time but I see nothing wrong with giving a good push in a spin.
I’ve learned the same procedure as Peter, except that the elevator should be held neutral until rotation stops and then moved “briskly” forward. I don’t know why that difference would matter, though.
That’s actually the right way, first the roation has to stop, then you break the stall with the elevator fwd .. i guess that’s what Peter meant
And then again, some people just say let go of all the controls and it will all sort itself out on its own.
And then again is it all the other way round in an inverted spin?
And then again if the spin is inverted are you going to realise that’s the case?
Etc etc….
I think the likes of a C152 do sort themselves out if you let go of the controls, but then those things need extreme input to spin in the first place.
I was “spun” in a C150, on the orders of the CAA AME (I had some ear infection a few years before that), and it took a lot to do it. There was no way of doing that by accident, so long as the pilot is basically awake.
It is also worth noting that it may take some time in a non-approved aircraft for the controls to take effect, and the rotation rate may increase before stopping. Even a few seconds probably feels like an eternity in a spin.
However, even light twins can be recovered – I know first hand of a Duchess that was spun during training and recovered satisfactorily with standard recovery actions.
There is also the Beggs/Mueller technique that advocates only idle power then full rudder opposite to rotation.
In all cases, if you are interested, go and get some instruction from a proper aeros instructor in something that spins normally like a Bulldog or Chipmunk rather than taking our word for it.
What i found interesting: My school (in 1994) had two identical 152s, even built the same year. While one of them would easily go into a sping (idle pwr, stall, full right ruddder) its sister ship refused and would be very hard to get into a spin. … We investigated the two planes but could not really find a difference.,
