The Air Florida tragedy happened around 1982.
Although this was years later, what motivated the FAA (maybe via NTSB...) to begin a very detailed study with very explicit training and totally new procedures was the Fokker 28 crash on takeoff at New York's La Guardia Airport. The plane has no slats, which results in the wing leading edges being hyper-sensitive to contamination. Even lots of dead insects can affect the airflow. And the crew had followed company procedures rather well, from what I remember.
Our procedures and new training which resulted should have been in use decades ago, but I suppose that not enough people died (US c0ckp1t crew and cargo don't count, i.e. a DC9-10 series). An F-28 also crashed in southern Canada (don't remember if de-iced or how long they waited before takeoff) not too many years ago which resulted in our FAA doing nothing about the danger. Other US airliners took off (727 takeoff at O'Hare with compressor stalls/surges on at least two engines) with crews not fully aware of the dangers, and there must have been numerous close-calls, as it was before microbursts were studied.
Last edited by Captain Stable; 22nd Jan 2005 at 12:16.