To the Skywest Crew with "Severe Icing" in DEN today...

[rickair7777]

Anyone heard of going missed? It is this procedure where you set go around thrust, ensure spoilers are in, set flaps 8 and climb like your life depended on it. It works real well if either pilot is close to the ground and has to exceed normal bank angles to get the landing gear over a paved surface.

This isn't an icing incident. This is an inexperience incident. There are many people who are now coming into this job who have never seen any ice, let alone severe icing and who really have no idea how to deal with it. First, an extra 5 or 10 knots (providing you are landing at a long runway) is a good idea. Hand flying the approach so you have a better feel for what the aircraft is doing is a good idea. Having the more experienced (on this case, less inexperienced pilot) fly an approach to minimums in icing conditions is a good idea. Considering another destination is also a good idea.

In almost 6,000 hours I've only seen icing on the severe side of moderate twice. Going slow always makes it worse, particularly in the RJ. My experience is that severe icing is hard to find in the real world and easy to get away from. Like thunderstorms, you learn to recognize the characteristics and take action to avoid the hazardous condition. Waiting 15 minutes can make all the difference.

Now days that longevity and experience are considered a bad thing at SkyWest (at least the ASA division of SkyWest) there are few who have seen any hazardous icing conditions and few Instructor Pilots who know enough about the stuff to teach their students how to deal with it. Only a few of the experienced IP's at my airline fully understand how important it is to stay on profile, most have never considered how ice is kept off the fan.

The sad fact is that airlines will continue hiring with 200 / 50 and upgrading IP's with only 1,000 hours in the aircraft, while trying to chase away the IP's with almost 20,000 hours total time & and a little uncommon sense. In my opinion this report really highlights the dangers of inexperienced crews out flying together.

In Comair 5191 the experienced guys get on the airplane focused on finding another job. In other incidents we read about inexperience like this nearly leading to a crash. Wouldn't it be nice if this was a profession where pilots flying airline passengers were paid reasonably and their experience appreciated by management?

I'm not criticizing these pilots, they apparently did not know any better. I am asking if this would have happened with a more experienced crew and I think we all know the answer.

TOTAL BS!

My original post on this described the IP's version of this event, I also stated that the NTSB came up with a different explanation (which you place all your faith in). I know this guy personally, he's a 17 year veteran and is highly respected...the problem wasn't the airplane or his knowledge of it, or his experience level. Do you think 17 years in T-props in the rockies would maybe provide some ice experience???

Or maybe you're one of those "Look I fly a Jet!" fags, and think that this guy didn't actually acumulate any REAL flying experience until he transitioned to the CRJ. Yeah, that's right he was just a prop loser, didn't know a thing about flying REAL airplanes. Dude, I think you need to go download your ipod or something.

 

[Frap]

based on my standards


So your standards on icing conditions are the ones we should follow?

Hmm. Perhaps those should be published, because we shouldn't be filing unnecessary reports, right?

 

[Morning Wood]

If the ice in DEN was as bad as these other posters act like it was - yes. But it wasn't.

What kind of airplane were you flying, tough guy?

 

[DrewBlows]

I like where this thread is going. It's pretty much all over the place and we've covered a few of the standard flightinfo issues. I actually have a serious question though.

The CRJ doesn't have a whole lot of surface area available to pilots to determine the severity if icing conditions. It has the "ICE" warning on the EICAS the windshield wipers and not much else. I've never flown the -200, but you sure can't see much on the wing tips in the -700. In addition, the controls are hydraulic and provide an artificial feel that makes it impossible to determine anything about the flying characteristics of the aircraft other than the fact that it's out of trim. Bottom line, the only guidance you really have is to turn the cowl anti-ice in precipitation (including clouds) when the TAT is -10 or below, to turn the wings on in the same conditions below 230 KIAS, and to turn everything on when "ICE" is annunciated. My company (Comair) teaches that you can detect supercooled large droplets (SLD, aka severe icing) by the presence of ice on the side windows. I have only seen this once, which was in the descent into CVG somewhere over Indiana. We reported it, got the fudge out of there, and didn't think much of it other than it was quite rare.

SLD on approach is a different story. I'd still want to "get the fudge out of there", but heading toward the ground doesn't seem like the best option at that point. Which leads me to my question. Do other companies teach about SLD and how to identify it? I would suspect that every company has a winter weather course, what kind of stuff is covered?

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Mesa sucks! Ha!

 

[I_Love_Lamp]

I like where this thread is going. It's pretty much all over the place and we've covered a few of the standard flightinfo issues. I actually have a serious question though.

The CRJ doesn't have a whole lot of surface area available to pilots to determine the severity if icing conditions. It has the "ICE" warning on the EICAS the windshield wipers and not much else. I've never flown the -200, but you sure can't see much on the wing tips in the -700. In addition, the controls are hydraulic and provide an artificial feel that makes it impossible to determine anything about the flying characteristics of the aircraft other than the fact that it's out of trim. Bottom line, the only guidance you really have is to turn the cowl anti-ice in precipitation (including clouds) when the TAT is -10 or below, to turn the wings on in the same conditions below 230 KIAS, and to turn everything on when "ICE" is annunciated. My company (Comair) teaches that you can detect supercooled large droplets (SLD, aka severe icing) by the presence of ice on the side windows. I have only seen this once, which was in the descent into CVG somewhere over Indiana. We reported it, got the fudge out of there, and didn't think much of it other than it was quite rare.

SLD on approach is a different story. I'd still want to "get the fudge out of there", but heading toward the ground doesn't seem like the best option at that point. Which leads me to my question. Do other companies teach about SLD and how to identify it? I would suspect that every company has a winter weather course, what kind of stuff is covered?

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Mesa sucks! Ha!

I've had my window ice up plenty of times (unheated)... it was FZRA but certainly not necessarily SLD....

 

[DrewBlows]

I've had my window ice up plenty of times (unheated)... it was FZRA but certainly not necessarily SLD....

The windows on the CRJ are heated which is why it's such an unusual event when ice starts to gather on one.

 

[Mr. Irrelevant]

I like where this thread is going. It's pretty much all over the place and we've covered a few of the standard flightinfo issues. I actually have a serious question though.

The CRJ doesn't have a whole lot of surface area available to pilots to determine the severity if icing conditions. It has the "ICE" warning on the EICAS the windshield wipers and not much else. I've never flown the -200, but you sure can't see much on the wing tips in the -700. In addition, the controls are hydraulic and provide an artificial feel that makes it impossible to determine anything about the flying characteristics of the aircraft other than the fact that it's out of trim.

In regards to the airplane being out of trim, wouldn't having hand-flown the SKW CRJ aircraft being discussed given the pilots an strong indirect indication? I understand that the PIC in this incident is very experienced. Not trying to upset rickair777 anymore here. Still, I wondered about their flying an approach that appeared to be done in known icing conditions and having the FO do the flying to such absolute minimums with only 15 hours in the aircraft. Maybe the FO had 10000 hours total time and a decision was made on strong prior experience or SKW policy is to switch legs regardless of conditions and aircraft/company experience? SKW policy to use the autopilot on all approaches regardless of conditions?

Also, I wonder how adding airspeed as one poster mentioned in the very beginning would lead to a tail stall. I'd always thought otherwise. Get airflow over the horizontal stabilizer!

Possibly something can be learned here about this SKW incident that might be of benefit to future check airmen and PIC's when making some of these decisions in lousy conditions. No offense to the PIC in the incident and obviously it is easy to Monday Morning QB. If the ice was that bad, I would think they'd figure it out before they got to 140AGL.

Mr. I.

 

[I_Love_Lamp]

The windows on the CRJ are heated which is why it's such an unusual event when ice starts to gather on one.

Foot, mouth, meet each other

My bad.

 

[DrewBlows]

In regards to the airplane being out of trim, wouldn't having hand-flown the SKW CRJ aircraft being discussed given the pilots an strong indirect indication?

Not likely. The CRJ has hydraulic controls so any feedback a pilot gets is artificial (someone who has recently completed ground school could probably expand on this). Even if you were hand flying, you would just trim to relieve stick force. The only indication you would have that something is wrong is when you run out of trim. At that point it's too late.

My personal wake-up call to the handling characteristics of an RJ came when I got in the simulator after a three month furlough. I had been flying C172s and PA-28s on my break and was very surprised in the sim when the control forces were lighter than the light airplanes I had been flying. Hydraulics are a wonderful thing, but they don't allow the control surface to move with the wind, so you don't get any direct control feel.

 

[ACT700]

Cardinal,

surely, there must be a seat in a shiny jet that's just being kept warm for you!

 

[No.W.]

Very true, the safety folks get it wrong on plenty of occassions, but usually the NTSB is a reliable source and "not under the influence" particularly of the FAA who they internally kind of regard as hacks. But the other decisions on this flight (letting a 15 hour FO perform the approach with VV100, keeping it coupled up in ice, flying right at VREF with a decreasing trend vector, not going missed) seem to indicate inexperience. Maybe the Capt. missed his cup of coffee, who knows, but taken only on the information presented in the report it looks like NOOB flying.. and every airline has managers that fly, sort of, usually who hold IP credentials, reference the worst aviation disaster of all time - Tenerife.

Arguably there are no weather related accidents. The airplane got into the weather under the command of someone. Once the airplane is in adverse weather the crew should have the ability to get out, or adjust, so that the safety of the flight is not in question. If the airplane (particularly a jet with a little wing) starts to resemble a popcicle on the unheated portion of the side window, starts to grow cool ice formations on the wipers, or anything else really interesting on an approach to minimums I'm probably taking the airplane (depending on the demonstrated skill of my FO - some are better and more experienced than I am) and seriously fingering the TOGA's.

But I would always defer to the Captain and crew. They were there and of course know a lot more than I do about their flight. My point is only that this business is getting to the point where the blind are leading the blind. At my airline we need to be keeping the 20,000 hour IP's, not chasing them off because "OH MY gOD, they make as much as a Vice President of ground services!!!!"

I can see that... I only know one thing, though, this captain/check airman has been with SkyWest for a LONG time(He was a C.Airman on the Brasilia)...and has a low 100's seniority number(in 2550 numbers). So, he is qualified to be doing the work. HOWEVER, I can't fathom a guess on what actually happened in that cockpit. He shared what He remembered...I especially remember the part about "pulling" and having "nothing there". I'm sure, in the future, given the same situation, He will be more conservative. I got the impression from His story that everything was fine on the approach...leading up to the incident. I KNOW there is more to the story than I remember. That's why I think it's important to not use online message boards to spread rumors. There are a lot of details missing.

 

[Way2Broke]

MOD INPUT:

Cardinal apologized and learned from the incident. Isn't that what we as pilots are suppose to do. I recall from my old CFI days that "Learning can be defined as a change in behavior as a result of expereince." Well I would say you guys gave Cardinal a experience here. Thread closed.