Aircraft crash in WNY

[Chalenge]

It sounds more like rubber room material to me. 

[Serenity]

Like most pilots, I learned the hard way. I used the autopilot in icing 3 years ago, noticed my airspeed drop 30 kts, disengaged the autopilot and ... oh boy ... was I up for a ride, I was lucky I was at 10K. Now I'm a training captain for my airline, and I always stress to the new guys "carefull with AP/Ice". We hire those CFIs, 1500ish Hours that were god's gift to aviation in theior previous job. But when they find themselves shooting a 2400ft RVR approach, all iced up they loose confidence, and turn the autopilot on. Makes for interesting reports, but that's how they learn.

The medias, or guys like Humble lack the practice and make up their mind with informations they piece up together from various sources. They have a guenine interest and a whill to do good, but the "sources" are often missunderstood, sensationalised, or plane out wrong. This is how a "Proceed with caution" on a flight manual, will become "and it's a big NO-NO".

Keep in mind that Airplanes manuals are not written by engeneers anymore, but by lawyers. For legal reasons, AFMs are now filled with "proceed with caution" ... you would never get to fly the dam thing if u always try to stick with the segments that didn't use the word "caution".

Don't be a fool and fall for the drama "that my friend is a big NO-NO". On my C402 I can see the ice on the wing/wing tanks/intakes, even the tail, judge the thickness and determine how severe my icing is. On the Metroliner, I can see part of the leading edge, can't really judge the thickness. As silly as it sounds, my "ice guage" is the Windshield wiper, which by experience, I'm now able to corelate ice accumulation on the wipers to how my plane flies.
On the Q400, I'm guessing they can't see the wings, they probably have a little light that tells "ice", and that's it. The autopilot will do an excellent job at flying the plane in icing condition ... but it's the pilot responsability to monitor. Pilot flying/pilot monitoring, autopilot flying/autopilot monitoring. As dawger mentioned it's easy to become complaisant. The AFM, the company SOP have advisory sections ... and it's all they are ADVISORY. Doesn't prevent you to use 15 deg of flaps in icing, doesn't prevent you to use autopilot in icing ... but if you do, you better be dam sure you are watching your plane like a hawk in a state of readiness. On the plane I fly it's gradual change in pitch and airspeed.

I recently eard a lot about "How pilots don't know they fly into icing?". It's not as easy as the medias make it look. So you have your levels of icing basicly: trace, light, moderate ( deice kicks it off), severe (deice cannot remove the ice). In your brief, u have the freezing level, other pilot reports. AIRMETs are cute but they are so wide in areas who cares.


Like this morning, I had to fly the 402B from Salt Lake to Pocatello. Airmet says icing, no Pirep, Freezing level 4,000ft. I'm filed for the MEA at 10,000ft that will bring me in the clouds. I go, 8,000ft in the climb I'm picking ice, 10,000ft I'm picking up a lot of ice, ain't going to work. I ask for 12,000ft, granteed, but I only reach 11K before riding the stall. Pireps come in,  Espur at 12K reports moderate icing, Amflight at 14K reports moderate, Lifeflight at 17K reports clear of clouds, ice till 16K. I'm struggeling at 11K, riding the buffet, The boots kind of work but I'm still all packed up. I report severe @ 11K.
What does that mean for the other pilots? The guy taking off in his 737, knows that he will be picking up ice from 8K to 16K on the climb, which in winter season is like "duh!". Does he care about my severe icing report at 11K. No ... severe for my lil 402 is at best moderate for him. Aeroflgith that also flies a 402B, my severe icing report will get his attention, and it did (we fly the same route), but when he flew it 40 minutes behind me
all he encountered was moderate for a lil bit.

If you cared reading that far, my point is information is available but it's far from being in black and white. You have to gather from various sources, interpret and narrow it to what might be usefull for your flight, and it's probably going to change by the time you get there anyway. The best you can do as a pilot, is to pay attention to details especially in adverse conditions ... it surely is not like the medias and self proclaimed aviation douchbags big red flashing letters that print on your windshield.

Question: (This isn't an attack) I've never flown through icing, and neither have any of my instructors (we just don't get icing in Hawaii!) but we're taught NOT to deploy flaps in icing conditions to avoid the tail stall. So, in your proffesional oppinion, was it a mistake to deploy flaps in this case? And what of the lack of airspeed over the markers?

[CAP1]

Question: (This isn't an attack) I've never flown through icing, and neither have any of my instructors (we just don't get icing in Hawaii!) but we're taught NOT to deploy flaps in icing conditions to avoid the tail stall. So, in your proffesional oppinion, was it a mistake to deploy flaps in this case? And what of the lack of airspeed over the markers?

i'm in nj, and we're taught the same thing dude.

in CAP, i flew a couple of missions,(as mission scanner) where we didn't even start the engine, 'till the frost was removed from the wings. it was only frost, but we won;t launch with it there.

 i've never flown in icing conditions, and god willing, combined with my being anal about when i'm willing to fly, i never will. i seriously admire those that have to handle those conditions.

 

[Bodhi]

*grin* He wasn't babbling; he was referencing a whole bunch of past stuff from the boards regarding conspiracy theories.

Conspiracy theories is one description.  Outright lies would be more accurate Txmom.  

[Golfer]

Question: (This isn't an attack) I've never flown through icing, and neither have any of my instructors (we just don't get icing in Hawaii!) but we're taught NOT to deploy flaps in icing conditions to avoid the tail stall. So, in your proffesional oppinion, was it a mistake to deploy flaps in this case? And what of the lack of airspeed over the markers?

That depends on the airplane you're flying and the phase of flight you're in.  There will be either an approved AFM procedure from the manufacturer or an approved SOP for the company you're operating for if on a for-hire basis.  In the kind of airplanes that you and CAP have ever flown then a no-flap landing is no big deal and if you were to inadvertantly encounter ice in an airplane not equipped to either prevent the formation or bust the ice from the airframe it's a good idea.  A big issue with ice accretion isn't so much that ice will stick to the flaps but something else which goes to you mentioning the tail stall.  Ice accumulating on the horizontal stab changes the shape of the stab (which is a wing, providing a downforce) and it's possible that the introduction of flaps can cause the airflow to change enough to create a tail stall condition.  The DHC-8 has hundreds of thousands of hours being flown in icing conditions by Air Canada, Horizon, Piedmont and many others all over the globe with great success as a cold weather operations platform.

I can't honestly remember the procedures we used specifically in the Encore and other 500 series Citations but in an ERJ-170 if ice was detected by the specifically designed probes the bleed air system would automatically turn on until you were clear of the icing.  If the icing conditions lasted longer than a perscribed amount of time (120 seconds?  I don't remember without looking it up) you'd be stuck with a CAS message informing you that you would need to use Ice Speeds.  You'd flip your landing reference speed cards over for the ice speeds which for the layman simply adds 10 knots to the normal approach speeds.  The 170 family has bleed air protecting the wing leading edges and engine inlets with no tail de-ice or anti-ice capabilities.  The Citation Encore has hot wings and boots on the horizontal tail.  The Lear 45 has hot everything.  That's also something worth pointing out the difference between deicing and anti-icing.  The de-ice boots used on the DHC-8 as well as thousands of other airplanes out there including numerous jet airplanes (Many Citation 500 models, Gulfstream 200, King Air, Saab 340, etc.) are used to physically remove accreted ice from the protected surfaces whereas bleed air or "hot wing" airplanes heat the protected areas to prevent the formation of ice in the first place.

What's that have to do with using flaps to land?  A lot.  You will configure on schedule as you slow the airplane for the approach and some folks might choose to delay landing gear extension if the ice in the area is in fact in the moderate range.  The airplane if not equipped with tail anti ice (ERJ170, Boeing 747, Challenger 300 and many more for instance) it was test flown and approved in the certification process to show that the worst case scenario ice formations did not adversely affect the flying qualities beyond perscribed limits.  That just means they flew the airplane around with ice shapes glued to the leading edges and found that it could do everything it needed to without requiring the ice systems on the tail.  Aircraft type plays more of a factor in it because the design is specific so simply generally applying a "don't use flaps" might and is not appropriate for many airplane types especially if outfitted with approved deicing/anti-icing equipment.

For those that do fly the NASA inflight icing video is available from Sportys for 10 bucks.  It's a worthwhile investment and will show you in practice what you've read about in theory.  If you're too cheap to spring for $10 then it's also floating around the internet for your viewing pleasure.  There are separate modules which address GA airplanes and transport/airline airplanes and the information might just save your life.  Flying in ice is no big deal in and of itself provided that both you and your airplane are up to the challenge.  It's an all or nothing proposition in that case because regardless if you are willing your airplane might not be capable.  The both of you need to be up to the challenge to not only fly through but escape from inflight icing encounters should you experience them inadvertently.

To answer your question:
No.  There was nothing wrong with properly configuring their airplane because the DHC-8-400 in addition to Colgan's SOPs would permit them to do so I.A.W. the Manufacturers specifications for the airplane.  The airplane is equipped with deice boots on both the wings and tail with an alert function to inform the pilots if the system should fail to operate.

I will defer to the NTSB to provide more facts and make an analysis before I learn from mistakes that only exist in speculative writings of uninformed reporters and posters.

[Dawger]

Yea. I have other stuff.

And I have personally trained pilots who believed flying was safe. You being an ag pilot I doubt complacency is really as much of a problem as it is in airline style flying.

I planned to crash every takeoff when I flew Twin Beeches. Now, not so much.

Cycling the De-ice boots and not lowering the flaps or using the autopilot isn't going to save you if you believe your airplane can fly through any icing situation and make no effort to get out of it.

[Golfer]

I planned to crash every takeoff when I flew Twin Beeches.

How'd you manage to screw that up?

That's not being overly dramatic or anything...

[Golfer]

i'm in nj, and we're taught the same thing dude.

in CAP, i flew a couple of missions,(as mission scanner) where we didn't even start the engine, 'till the frost was removed from the wings. it was only frost, but we won;t launch with it there.

 i've never flown in icing conditions, and god willing, combined with my being anal about when i'm willing to fly, i never will. i seriously admire those that have to handle those conditions.

 

Frost is deadly as is any contamination on the wings from accumulation of ice on the ground.  Inflight icing has a different dynamic and can kill you in new and exciting ways that is different from ground accumulation which occurs generally on the tops of the wings.  This is why you see airliners applying one of several kinds of fluid to the tops of their wings with the most frequent being Type I (a de-icing fluid) and Type IV (an anti-icing fluid, usually green) fluids.  The Type I is a mixture of either glycol and water or simply glycol and usually heated which when applied will remove exisiting ice from the surfaces of the airplane.  Type IV is a thicker almost always 100% concentration of glycol which actually absorbs and suspends the falling contaminants.  Type IV is designed to break away from the top of the wing as the airplane accelerates down the runway on the takeoff roll eventually blowing off before (in theory) the airplane rotates.  This protects the top of the wing during ground operations and allows you to transition to the airborne segment of your flight using the onboard ice protection measures be they deicing or anti-icing.  Lighter/smaller/slower airplanes don't use Type IV fluid because the speed required to have the fluid blow away is higher than some of them can even fly.  You can use Type II or III to find a median which allows longer holdover times which means the time of usefulness the fluid on your wings has to absorb and suspend the contaminants before you need to remove & reapply the fluid.  They're identified by color with Type I being either Pink or Orange, Type II is a straw color which looks like jet fuel and Type IV is always Green.  I've never actually seen/used Type III fluid but I believe it's a lime green color according to one manufacturer of the stuff.

At any rate you mentioned frost and I'm very troubled with your statment "it's only frost."  Frost used to be permitted on your airplane if polished smooth but that was changed no long ago.  Now if your aircraft has frost it must be removed (heated hangar, fluid or sublimation) before you are allowed to depart.  It's good that you didn't start the engine because the damage that frost does to the airflow over your wing would be evident when you attempted to rotate and the airplane refused to fly.

[SFRT - Frenchy]

Question: (This isn't an attack) I've never flown through icing, and neither have any of my instructors (we just don't get icing in Hawaii!) but we're taught NOT to deploy flaps in icing conditions to avoid the tail stall. So, in your proffesional oppinion, was it a mistake to deploy flaps in this case? And what of the lack of airspeed over the markers?

The idea of NOT deploying flaps in icing condition is to me a "failsafe" concept, same as "Don't drink, for sure don't get a DUI, compared to ... will this one glass of vodka put me over the legal limit?". As I mentioned earlier, awarness and close monitoring should be the key, monitor closely for anything odd and get ready to undo what u did.

I don't know Q400s, but I'll bet she's more than able to handle flaps and ice. The lack of airspeed is what gets me, and it comes back to the lack of monitoring I was talking about. Now I don't mean to imply that the creew was sipping coffee looking at flight attendants boobies. Maybe the creew was busy doing a before landing checklist at the Final Approach Fix and failed to notice the airspeed decreasing, AOA increasing till the autopilot "gave up".

I fly 4 to 8 legs a day, 5 days a week, It's really easy to become complaisant. Hair raising stuff becomes routine, and it's a true struggle to treat every leg like "a private pilot flying once a month would do". I'm the first to admit that I sometimes catch myself doing a single engine turn, and the last thing I remember was talking to departure.

[humble]

The medias, or guys like Humble lack the practice and make up their mind with informations they piece up together from various sources. They have a guenine interest and a whill to do good, but the "sources" are often missunderstood, sensationalised, or plane out wrong. This is how a "Proceed with caution" on a flight manual, will become "and it's a big NO-NO".


As I've clearly stated none of what I've posted is "my opinion". I'm smart enough to recognize the limitations of my personal knowledge in this particular area. What I have posted is thoughts and comments by current Dash-8 400 drivers who are dealing with this while currently flying the plane. From everything your posting your in agreement with what I've relayed...no way that plane should have been on auto pilot at that speed over the outer marker....regardless of what the FAA allows. Further if in fact the crew conversation of "significant icing" is correct then the low speed is exceptionally disturbing. Minimum maneuvering speed as per a post on PPRuNe is 135 kts in clean configuration in good weather and that is far below what this Captain felt was safe. With the potential icing this is right at where the stick shaker should (and did kick in).

The simple reality is that a low time (both total time and certainly in type (110 total hours) made a simple but major mistake and killed himself and 48 other people. There is no justification for allowing that plane to get that slow in those conditions or to allow things to deteriorate to the point that the AP kicked the plane back on the edge of a stall. How do you in conditions of known icing not only allow speed to drop that low but then drop gear and flaps?

The problem isn't my perception, its the obvious complacency of the PIC (not just here but Roselawn and others) that ignores "proceed with caution". This appears to have been not only an avoidable accident but in fact one that would not have happened if the pilot had followed his own companies SOP for plane type and conditions.

[SFRT - Frenchy]

Humble, I salute your last post, it makes a lot of sense. My comments were about your posts from the first couple of pages, you might want to re-read them. Your comments/conclusions/even source quoting were  "out there", especially about the ATR crash.

It's like blaming me for loosing a wheel that flew into your window while driving my Viper at 40MPH in reverse. Granteed I should not have been driving that fast in reverse, and the car was probably not design for it, but you better believe the Viper could handle it. It was a design flaw from Dodge, not the fact I did it. Same with the ATR, that's why the NTSB "cleared the creew", and NTSb tells it like it is, they don't care.

I feel better now 

[CAP1]

Frost is deadly as is any contamination on the wings from accumulation of ice on the ground.  Inflight icing has a different dynamic and can kill you in new and exciting ways that is different from ground accumulation which occurs generally on the tops of the wings.  This is why you see airliners applying one of several kinds of fluid to the tops of their wings with the most frequent being Type I (a de-icing fluid) and Type IV (an anti-icing fluid, usually green) fluids.  The Type I is a mixture of either glycol and water or simply glycol and usually heated which when applied will remove exisiting ice from the surfaces of the airplane.  Type IV is a thicker almost always 100% concentration of glycol which actually absorbs and suspends the falling contaminants.  Type IV is designed to break away from the top of the wing as the airplane accelerates down the runway on the takeoff roll eventually blowing off before (in theory) the airplane rotates.  This protects the top of the wing during ground operations and allows you to transition to the airborne segment of your flight using the onboard ice protection measures be they deicing or anti-icing.  Lighter/smaller/slower airplanes don't use Type IV fluid because the speed required to have the fluid blow away is higher than some of them can even fly.  You can use Type II or III to find a median which allows longer holdover times which means the time of usefulness the fluid on your wings has to absorb and suspend the contaminants before you need to remove & reapply the fluid.  They're identified by color with Type I being either Pink or Orange, Type II is a straw color which looks like jet fuel and Type IV is always Green.  I've never actually seen/used Type III fluid but I believe it's a lime green color according to one manufacturer of the stuff.

At any rate you mentioned frost and I'm very troubled with your statment "it's only frost."  Frost used to be permitted on your airplane if polished smooth but that was changed no long ago.  Now if your aircraft has frost it must be removed (heated hangar, fluid or sublimation) before you are allowed to depart.  It's good that you didn't start the engine because the damage that frost does to the airflow over your wing would be evident when you attempted to rotate and the airplane refused to fly.

this is  the kind of replies that are good to read.

 the pilot had explained to us how severly that the frost would've disrupted the airflow. until then, i had no clue how serious frost could be. it was something my first CFI's had never talked about. they only hit briefly on anything IMC related. hell, one of them(who i later found out took all of his training in florida) was with me for a lesson in the winter. it had snowed fairly heavy a couple days before, but there were icy spots on the taxiway(small and easily avoided). so i asked him the stupid question. "do i taxi differently in these conditions?" his answer? "i dunno. i just moved up here"

 the CFI i fly with now(who'll be checking me out in the clubs pipers) is in his 50's, doesn't need the money, and does this because he enjoys it). he is the reason that a couple of small incidents i had never became big problems. flying with this guy is never boring, and he teaches as if he was teaching someone in his own family, not like he's being paid to teach.

 hell, he needed a safety pilot last fall, and asked me if i wanted to go with him.....i did. we took his cherokee, and he did what he wanted. then he STILL taught me a few things.  all CFI's should be like that, not like the ones just buildoing time.


anyway, thank you sir, for another very informative post. (i mean that)<<S>>

[CAP1]

The idea of NOT deploying flaps in icing condition is to me a "failsafe" concept, same as "Don't drink, for sure don't get a DUI, compared to ... will this one glass of vodka put me over the legal limit?". As I mentioned earlier, awarness and close monitoring should be the key, monitor closely for anything odd and get ready to undo what u did.

I don't know Q400s, but I'll bet she's more than able to handle flaps and ice. The lack of airspeed is what gets me, and it comes back to the lack of monitoring I was talking about. Now I don't mean to imply that the creew was sipping coffee looking at flight attendants boobies. Maybe the creew was busy doing a before landing checklist at the Final Approach Fix and failed to notice the airspeed decreasing, AOA increasing till the autopilot "gave up".

this will make me ask a couple of questions...only because i don;t know.
 i had seen "stick shaker" and "stick pusher" mentioned in earlier posts. does that mean that these aircraft are fly-bywire? if so, does something transmit that "mushy" feel if you get slow?  i only ask, as you mentioned lack of airspeed. also, if they were picking up ice, would there be a possibility of the pitot icing up?/ even if it is heated?

 not asking to question what was done, but rather to learn more about this, is all.

<<S>>

[Serenity]

this will make me ask a couple of questions...only because i don;t know.
 i had seen "stick shaker" and "stick pusher" mentioned in earlier posts. does that mean that these aircraft are fly-bywire? if so, does something transmit that "mushy" feel if you get slow?  i only ask, as you mentioned lack of airspeed. also, if they were picking up ice, would there be a possibility of the pitot icing up?/ even if it is heated?

 not asking to question what was done, but rather to learn more about this, is all.

<<S>>

I'm with you, lol. Your story about the Florida guy is very similar to our tropic CFIs. They dont really bother learning about it themselves since they never expect to see it.

The Dash-8 is NOT IIRC fly-by-wire, nor is any other commercial aircraft. Fly-by-wire (Assuming we're thinking of the same thing) is reserved for the relaxed-stability fighter jets.

[SFRT - Frenchy]

The Metro that I fly has a stick pusher yet it's all cable flight controls. The stick pusher works with a system called SAS (Stall Avoidance System). The SAS is a computer that will compute your V/Vs (kind of ur AOA), and activate when u reach the 1.1 V/Vs range. A servo will push the control collum foward, u can overide the pusher if u apply over 60 lbs of force with your arms. The SAS uses various elements as inputs, such as your AOA via a vane on the nose, your flap position, and ram air measured at the co-pilot's pitot.

The SAS triggers a horn +10 to +5 kts from stall, and the pusher from stall +4 to -1. It deactivates itself at 140+ kts.

As far as the heated pitot system, I have never seen one with ice on it while heated. On my plane, I have 2 independants pitots, one for the co-pilot, one for the pilot.

If one of the input of the SAS gets wacked, the SAS will provide false information, maybe activate the pusher. We do have the option of shutting the SAS off, with the inflight limitation of "Do not stall aircraft with SAS inop".

That's my lil turboprop, others probably have different systems.