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?
Source: Flight International
