is there any correlation between the pitot icing cases geographical/flight level location and other newly developed patterns in weather (possibly to global warnimg ?)
As this is recently happening much more frequently there must be some reason to this:
- technical design - unlikely as there is still substantian number of planes with the same technology being used for last 10 years and more
- flight patterns - i have no knowledge to check this - needed input from more experienced, but the only thing that comes to my mind is smaller plane separation due to higher traffic (mignt not be the case when flying to/fro SA)
- weather patterns - most probable as we are still learning about the weather phenomenon internal structure. Warmer seas (an clearly established fact) mean more energy available to build higher cb and transport huge masses of air and water into high elevations
The production/certification tests are based on some standard repeatable conditions which may be currently not standing up to real life requirements