Originally Posted by
vanHorck
To me there are 3 questions coming out of this sad saga:
1. What happened" technically" during the flight. Why was the flight at 5,000 feet in known icing conditions. Why no attempt to immediately climb when they hit the ice, the technical state of the plane, the competence of the piloting person
I flew one for a while about 15 years ago (for an owner) when I was flying anything that paid after a period out of flying. The aircraft was cleared into known icing and had boots, heated screen etc. At least one crashed in the USA after a pilot forgot the pitot heater and flew into icing. The auto-pilot dropped out due to lack of information, the pilot was suddenly hand flying on limited panel and it was rapidly down hill from there. An airline pilot heard his calls on the radio and suggested pitot heating, which according to the POH should have been on all the time.
One thing I disliked intensely was that Piper recommended not pulling the power back to descend to save "shock cooling" Instead they recommended pitching over, leaving the power at cruise setting and coming down at high speed, using airbrakes to manage speed control. I found on the one I flew that even with airbrakes just pitching over allowed the speed to rapidly go to the top of the yellow arc. This was often at the worst time as you descended into the weather you had been above, where there would be more turbulence, and gusty conditions making a grip on the top of the yellow arc quite tenuous.
In this case the descent seems to me to be daft. If the de-icing kit all tested on the ground any halfway competent IFR pilot would have climbed. Colder air, less chance for ice to accrete and what you've already got tends to break away, less surface lumps to hit and in the PA46 no speed control worries, if he even knew what the POH said about speed control in the first place. All stuff a pro would have known, and an amateur either learns by painful experience or sponging information from the pros who still like to fly fun aeroplanes in their free time.
SND