I wasn't suggesting that the crew do anything, but what is written in their manual to be in compliance with their ground de-icing program. It is my understanding that in certain aircraft it is permissable and in the manual that it is authorized to open a galley door for instance to visually inspect the wings for contamination or fluid failure.
Look, when it comes right down to it alot of this crap that it is in the winter operations section of our FLOP is pretty much boiler plate verbage thats the same at every 121 operator out there.
Here is the bottom line...Using your good judgement, training, experience and other resources to make a GO/NO-GO decision about de-icing the airplane. If you exceed a HOT and it is still actively snowing, light freezing rain, etc...And, you can't visually tell if your representative surface is clean. GO back to the pad! Nothing too complicated about that, in fact it might have been a consideration to never have blocked out in the first place. The FAA has now decided to protect us from ourselves by taking alot of the crew out of the decision matrix. No more pre-take-off contamination check if you exceed the HOT has created more problems than it solved because they all think we are dumbasses. So, instead of being able to operate like pilots we are operating like friggin robots, wasting time, money and other resources to be in "compliance". Shoot, just in a 19hundo it was impossible to get sprayed with type I and make it to the runway within the HOT if it you had anything more than -SN. This really caught us with our pants down because none of our out-stations had Type IV. Score another point for thinking ahead and close liason with the POI's office...We might as well just get a friggin dog to sit in the right seat to bite our hand if we touch anything in the cockpit!
Regards,
ex-Navy Rotorhead
uke:
