Compressible viscoelastic formulation (CVF) is used to perform stability analysis of planar and curvilinear flows. Incompressible eigensolutions are recovered from CVF in the limit of small compressibility. CVF allows for the derivation of a simple eigenvalue problem for stability analysis as compared to a generalized eigenvalue problem (GEVP) that results from the incompressible flow equations. Hence computational cost can be significantly reduced. A minimal CVF useful for multi-dimensional flows is presented. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.