Failure
These compensations can only do so much. Increasing angle of attack to compensate for reduced blade airspeed has the effect of maintaining lift only until the point where critical angle of attack is reached, after this point lift sharply decreases.
All airfoils have a critical angle of attack (also called a stall angle of attack) which is the angle of attack that produces most lift. Above this angle flow over the airfoil becomes detached and lift decreases, this is commonly called a stall.
When a fixed-wing aircraft exceeds its critical angle of attack the entire aircraft loses lift and enters a condition called a stall. The usual results of a fixed-wing stall are a sharp drop in aircraft altitude and a dive. Stalls in fixed-wing aircraft are often a recoverable event.
In a retreating-blade stall, however, only the retreating half of the helicopter's rotor disc experiences a stall. The advancing blade continues to generate lift, but the retreating blade enters a stall condition, usually resulting in an uncommanded increase in pitch of the nose and a roll in the direction of the retreating side of the rotor disc. In counter-clockwise rotating rotor systems (as in most American-made types) this is the left side. In clockwise rotating systems it is a roll to the right.
Read more about this topic: Retreating Blade Stall
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Any effort in philosophy to make the obscure obvious is likely to be unappealing, for the penalty of failure is confusion while the reward of success is banality. An answer, once found, is dull; and the only remaining interest lies in a further effort to render equally dull what is still obscure enough to be intriguing.”
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“Dear George: Remember no man is a failure who has friends. Thanks for the wings! Love, Clarence”
—Frances Goodrich (1891–1984)