[safisoft]

Back on this, how easy is it to induce a stall a cruise at FL 41. Converting TAS to IAS, 120 KIAS gives you 208 KTAS. .8 Mach, I would guess would give you a pretty good margin still.

It depends upon the aircraft and turbulence. For an aircraft to be certified to an altitude at a given weight, it must have a 1.3 g limit in most cases. From what I am reading though, this sounds more like an engine/fuel issue than a wing issue. The limiting factor in most aircraft is not the engines, but the wing.

[Dead Dog]

That's what I was looking for, I couldn't find it with a quick glance through FAR25.

I'd be curious what the control deflections looked like during all of this.

I've been involved with civil aviation for most of my 35 years, from riding in the back of Cessnas as a toddler, to CFI, to cube dwelling engineer. During this time, 9 people that I either knew, worked with, or had met hanging around the field have bit it. Only one was for something other than blatent idiocy, sucidal idiocy, or percipitated from a mechanical failure. And she probably had the old -172 front seat slip.

Needless to say, I get a bit hung up on trying to make sense out of these. And with engines like the FJ-33 comming into production, high altitude-high subsonic issues are going to be facts of life for more and more of us.