New FAA video on ice and its effect on stalling

Tail stall is the scariest thought….good advice for differentiating….although it points out this is very rare…it seems mainly confined to T-tail turboprop commuters….like the EMB120 and the ATR72…

Interesting.

No climb performance requirements in icing conditions, for certification, prior to 1993.

Lesson #1 is to watch the IAS when flying in IMC in the icing temp range.

Avoid use of flaps if heavily iced up because it increases elevator load (pick a long runway).

A tail stall is (almost?) impossible if flaps are not used! 15:35 in the video. This surprised me.

Increasing power (in some types) increases tail loading and brings tail stall closer.

If there is a sudden pitch-down, pull back.

Anything certified before 1994, and not modified since, has not been evaluated for tail icing (17:20).

Good stuff. Thanks for posting.

This was published today, in the UK: https://goo.gl/bE2QQw

Yet more on AF 447. but relevant to If there is a sudden pitch-down, pull back above….context is important?

It states the wings iced up. Is that really true? I thought AF447 was clean except for pitot tubes which got bunged-up with crystals. Surely they did not get structural (airframe) ice at FL360 or whatever (event though it was very warm)?

Peter wrote:

It states the wings iced up. Is that really true?

Never heard about that either. On the contrary, even this article (which I don’t care to read full length as it does not seem to contain anything which is not in the accident report) says: As the plane approached the storm, ice crystals began to form on the wings. Bonin and Robert switched on the anti-icing system to prevent too much ice building up and slowing the plane down.

AnthonyQ wrote:

Tail stall is the scariest thought….good advice for differentiating….although it points out this is very rare…it seems mainly confined to T-tail turboprop commuters….like the EMB120 and the ATR72…

You don’t need a T-tail: Swedline 618. The loss of control happened when flaps were extended on the approach. Textbook stabiliser stall. As you can see from the picture linked at the end of the article, the dive was essentially vertical.

So that Guardian AF447 article is BS in the detail.

Peter wrote:

So that Guardian AF447 article is BS in the detail.

I wouldn’t say that, because it says absolutely nothing about airframe icing (the topic of this thread) other than that the pilots had turned their anti-icing system on. The crash of AF447 had absolutely nothing to do with airframe icing.

It says

That I thought was BS.