What is a Dutch roll in aviation?

Dutch roll is a type of aircraft motion consisting of an out-of-phase combination of tail-wagging (yaw) and rocking from side to side (roll). This yaw-roll coupling is one of the basic flight dynamic modes (others include phugoid, short period, and spiral divergence).



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The dutch roll mode is a classical damped oscillation in yaw, about the oz axis of the aircraft, which couples into roll and, to a lesser extent, into sideslip. The motion it describes is therefore a complex interaction between all three lateral-directional degrees of freedom.

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The phugoid or long period motion is a characteristic oscillations of the aircraft after a small disturbance of the steady flight (ie. due to small horizontal control surface motion or the air gust). The airplane is traveling along the sinusoidal trajectory with small changes of the air speed and pitch angle.

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While some fixed wing aircraft are harder to fly than others, a rotary is by far the hardest to fly.

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