Dash 8 Q400 Severe Icing?
I flew BHX -> FRA on Thursday morning with Flybe on a Dash 8.
About 10 minutes into the flight the aircraft start to become quite unstable as if we were entering turbulance, and there was a lot of vibration and shaking through the aircraft itself. At this point the engines were advanced to a high throttle setting and the pilot announced that were were experiencing "Severe Icing" and the engine speed had been increased for this reason.
Following the announcement I looked outisde and noticed that we were in quite dense cloud and that I could visibly see thick ice on the wings still increasing in thickness, but that the leading edges did seem to be gradually shedding pieces which I guess is due to the anti-icing boots expanding. I also noticed that the propellors where quite white, and that the centre of the propellor was very white as if covered with thick ice.
We continued on high engine revs for probably another 10 minutes and climbed to just above the clouds. Once out of the cloud the icing did stop and gradually clear along with the instability, although the vibration remained for a long time even after the engine revs reduced to normal. Some ice remained until we were on approach in Frankfurt by which time the vibration had also gone. I'm used to flying on the Dash 8 so I do realise that you always get some vibration, expecially sitting near the engines, but I was in row 2 and this was not "normal" from my experiences.
Knowing about previous Q400 icing incidents, I was just wondering how serious (if at all) this situation actually was as it was the first time I've experienced it as a regular SLF. It was quite concerning that the aircraft seemed to be icing up very quickly and I got the feeling that we were not in turbulent air, but rather the aircraft stability was a control issue?