What is that weather app, Aeroplus?
Err, Aeroplus! 
but my intention was to show that icing can, in no time, make a professional airplane unflyable.
I think the point with Colgan was that the airplane was flyable. It was the stalling that made it unflyable. The NTSB expressly found icing wasn’t a meaningful contributor.
Sorry, that version of the weather app is not available yet. It is a beta version. What is nice is that the Norwegian flying magazine just reviewed it as the best allround aviation weather app with a 6 out of 6 rating. In essence it gives you all you would need to fly and plan your flight without needing a computer (but you need an iPad or iPhone).
You may find it ironic that I cite those, but my intention was to show that icing can, in no time, make a professional airplane unflyable.
And as Jason says, the point is that the Colgan Q400 was far from unflyable.
(Section 2.2.1 of the report)
The airplane performance study and simulations showed that the airplane experienced
minimal performance degradation because of ice accretion. Specifically, the AOA at the time
of the wing stall was about 1° above the expected AOA for a clean wing (no ice accretion) stall
warning. Thus, the airplane could have been operated in normal flight, at the non-icing Vref, and
with a substantial margin remaining above the actual point of stall. As a result, the NTSB
concludes that the minimal aircraft performance degradation resulting from ice accumulation did
not affect the flight crew’s ability to fly and control the airplane.
But at least one of the crew was sufficiently uncomfortable with the idea of icing that it may have affected their mindset in reaction to the stall warning, and even though the aircraft was actually behaving normally:
22:11:54.3
HOT-2
no but all these guys are complaining they’re saying you know how we
were supposed to upgrade by now and they’re complaining I’m thinking
you know what? I really wouldn’t mind going through a a winter in the
northeast before I have to upgrade to captain.
…
22:12:05.0
HOT-2
I’ve never seen icing conditions. I’ve never deiced. I’ve never seen any—
I’ve never experienced any of that. I don’t want to have to experience that
and make those kinds of calls. you know I’dve freaked out. I’dve have like
seen this much ice and thought oh my gosh we were going to crash.
(the stickshaker sounded at 22:16:27.4 and the captain responded with an aft control movement, and the FO raised the flaps. The aircraft then stalled and failed to recover.)
When I first saw the in the news, I thought the cause was obvious: it was a tailplane icing accident. Although the NTSB thinks it unlikely that the crew’s reaction was based on a similar misconception, I firmly believe that a significant contributor to this accident was an unhelpful fear of icing conditions.
[italics sorted out]
In all the winter flying I do, I regularly (about all the time) get some minor rime ice in the climb out to cruising altitude and of course in the descend into my destination. Other than that, there is no ice, except for the exceptions, which you then have to deal with. If the German weather service posts an icing warning most of the year, they are definitely doing it for legal purposes to not be blamed afterwards. I think it is virtually impossible to predict the ice (other than the usual rime/mixed ice on climbing/descending through the cloud layer). The danger zone is the 0 to -20 degrees Celsius area, so in climbing out I climb above it (at a lower temp) and have yet to experience ice there. The one time I did experience “severe” icing was in a cloud layer of just 3 to 4000 feet thick on a sunny day while flying inbound Rotterdam from Charlton Park, but even then, the Cirrus has this boost mode that only lasts for about 20 minutes max where it distributes a maximum flow of TKS to all services. I have yet to see that this is not enough to get out of the situation. My experience is that it is sufficient to get out, even thought the ice buildup was quite substantial within 2-3 minutes.
That said, both flying in winter and also through frontal weather (up to a certain point of course) and flying at night makes that I can fly about all of my planned flights (with some minor adjustments in moving the departure earlier or later than planned) without me taking (for myself of my family) any risks I would not like to take.
AeroPlus.
how do you get the vertical profile for your route? I have both the flighplan and weather app. For the weather app I purchased a subscription on my iPad but I’m not able to use this very same subscription on my iPhone. Of course, I’m using the same account. Does it require a separate purchase?
Thx,
Andreas
Where does the Aeroplus software get the data? Is it from GFS?
bookworm,
yes, I understand that. But fact is that a professional crew of two airline pilots DID crash, and so did American Eagle, the TBM700 in NJ, a Cessna 310 in Germany abd countless others. Since I do not live in the dangerous bubble that I’m a better pilot than all of those people and since my intuition tells me that the amount of ice i will find is not really predictable – i prefer to stay conservative about it and avoid it as good as I can.
What is the real world practical difference FOR YOU between a plane certified for FIKI and one that has deicing but no FIKI?
