Originally Posted by
Dave Gittins
Didn't an Air Florida crew at Washington once think the nice fluffy snow would blow off when they started the roll ? That didn't work out too well.
Air Florida into the Potomac was popularly viewed as caused by snow on the wings, but the actual root cause of the accident was failure to activate engine probe anti-ice leading to errant power settings due to false EPR readings. There were also CRM issues as the FO made comments on the slugguush T/O roll acceleration. And the final hole in the cheese was failure to firewall the throttles when the alternative was hitting a bridge!
There was a well publicized case years ago where an IB A340 crew taxiing out at KBOS was cautioned by several other crews about the snow on their wings, but blithely decided to brush off the warnings rather than the snow. Nothing bad happened.