By all respect, in airline biz there is no room for speculations, no dry-snow-will-blow-off-during-TO procedures and no room for morons who think so.
I am certainly not defending these Aeroflot cowboys. On the contrary. (Just read my contributions in
the parallel topic on the tech log)
But... let me tell you the story of an ex-colleague. He was DFO of our airline at that time. He was operating an A320 winter charter flight to Finnish Lapland with pax who were going to visit Santa Claus. I believe it was to
Enontekio. It was EXTREMELY cold that day. Can't remember the exact temperature he said, but it must have been below -30°C for sure. They arrived early in the morning.
The same evening when they wanted to depart, the wings were covered by aprox. 1,5 cm of dry snow which had fallen during the afternoon. So, the captain requested de-icing. The Finair de-icing team that had been dispatched to Enontekio from Rovaniemi told him that de-icing was not an option because the de-icing fluid would be ineffective and would freeze! They brought a ladder and showed him that the snow was extremely dry and light and absolutely not sticking to the wings. The snow had fallen on a very cold and dry wing surface. The de-icing team said that Finair has procedures authorizing take-off in such conditions.
The captain decided to depart (engine intakes were cleaned with a brush) and even made a PA to the pax explaining his decision. Some pax later confirmed that the snow had completely been blown of the wing early during the take-off roll.
Was this particular captain a moron or a cowboy? In my opinion certainly not. Rules are there to be followed, but sometimes common sense has to prevail! Follow rules? Of course, but there should always be room for intelligently used common sense!