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Thread: icing accident
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Old 8th Aug 2011, 17:32
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con-pilot

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Sounds like accident you are thinking of may the 737 that crashed into the Potomac. I can't recall, someone will, the carrier but I think they were based in Florida and the accident occurred when they took off with icing on the wings. My guess it was the mid 80s.
I'm pretty sure that is the accident in question. However, airframe icing was not the direct cause of the accident. The real cause of the accident was that the ERP probes in the engine inlet did become clogged/obstructed with ice, causing the ERP gage to give false readings.

So when max power was set, the actual power of the engine was around 78%* not 100% due to the false readings.

The real tragic thing about this accident is, at any point before they hit the bridge, if they had firewalled the engines, they would have avoided the accident.

In the cockpit voice reorder the co-pilot (PF) can be heard asking the captain if the power setting are correct, at least two times.



* Going from memory on that, to lazy to look up the actual figure.
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