Compliance with current longitudinal handling qualities criteria is not a guaranteed acceptance of vehicle characteristics. Several criteria for satisfactory characteristics resulting from handling qualities investigations in simulators and variable-stability airplanes are reviewed; in comparison, these criteria reveal significant areas of disagreement. Further, much of the large-airplane data available that reflect satisfactory characteristics in flight would be judged unacceptable to unsatisfactory from these criteria. Consideration of the piloting technique involved in flightpath control indicates the significance of the parameters La/ 15 g/rad also yield good agreement when mapped onto the nza/0}n vs f plane. These three parameters—nza, La/