Flight International
Feb 18 2008

Comment – Why don’t pilots take icing seriously?

By David Learmount

Icing is an operator problem that never goes away. An extensive study
by this magazine (Flight International, 27 September-3 October 2005)
found that although researchers continue to look for an anti-icing
silver bullet, we are where we were in the 1950s – nothing radical
has changed.

That’s why icing is an operator problem or – to be specific – a pilot
problem. The manufacturers do their best, tweaking designs, systems
and operating manual advice to try to improve things, but there’s
only so much they can do. Pilots, on the other hand, operate where
the problem is: they can see and feel the weather, they can see and –
literally – feel the aircraft.

"Strange as it may seem, a very light coating of snow or ice, light
enough to be hardly visible, will have a tremendous effect on
reducing the performance of a modern airplane." Those words were
spoken in 1939 by Jerry Lederer, founder of the Flight Safety
Foundation. They were echoed in February 2005 in a US Federal
Aviation Administration airworthiness directive, which pointed out:
"Even small amounts of frost, ice, snow or slush on the wing
leading-edges or forward upper wing surfaces can cause loss of
control at take-off."

It is not official that the Yerevan Bombardier CRJ100 accident at
take-off – spectacular but, fortunately, not fatal – was caused by
airframe icing, but it is difficult to imagine what else it was
likely to have been, given the aircraft’s behaviour and the fact that
conditions at the time were classic for icing.

Icing is a perennial killer. Why do pilots still not take its risks
seriously?

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