What refers to the aircraft's response over time when disturbed from a given AOA, slip or bank?

• A. Static stability
• B. Dynamic stability
• C. Positive static stability
• D. Neutral static stability

Answer: (B)

Dynamic stability is about how the airplane’s motion evolves over time after you disturb it in pitch (angle of attack), sideslip, or bank. After a disturbance, you look at the whole time history: do the resulting pitch, yaw, or roll motions die out and the aircraft return to its trimmed state, or do the motions continue, oscillate, or even grow? The presence and strength of aerodynamic damping determine this behavior—if the disturbances are damped out, the aircraft has good dynamic stability; if the motions persist with constant amplitude, it’s neutrally stable; if they grow, it’s dynamically unstable.

Static stability, in contrast, is about the immediate tendency right at the moment of disturbance—whether there’s a restoring or diverging tendency in that instant. So dynamic stability answers how the response evolves over time, which is exactly what the question is asking.