I’ll add my compliments to those of
Regulation 6 and
M.Mouse … and add one additional comment …
Originally Posted by M.Mouse
There is no panacea and it scares me to read some of the comments from professional pilots justifying attempting a take-off without a clean wing.
As the former US FAA Administrator said repeatedly, “we cannot legislate professionalism,” and I think most everyone would agree – certainly I do. The precepts of professionalism that are most regularly described typically include attitude, competence, conduct, and perhaps above all, character – none of which, perhaps with the exception of competence, lend themselves very easily to a set of recognizable standards.
This is the underlying reason that in an earlier post I pointed out the regulatory requirement that addresses taking off with contaminants posing a safety risk, and attempted to point out why it may be that many (most?) of those pilots who seem to treat wing contamination with less respect than others … do so with confidence that governmental officials are of the opinion that only extreme cases warrant a particular response, and situations not as extreme may be disregarded and a continuation of “ops normal” may proceed. The reference is 14CFR §91.527(a) and it says, “No pilot may take off an airplane that has frost, ice, or snow
adhering to any propeller, windshield, stabilizing or control surface; to a powerplant installation; or to an airspeed, altimeter, rate of climb, or flight attitude instrument system or wing…” (my emphasis added). To many, this requirement just may indicate that as long as a contaminant isn’t known to be adhering to the wing, particularly if it’s snow that has just recently fallen on the wing’s surface, it’s perfectly acceptable and certainly legal, to takeoff. The video at the start of this thread would seem to verify that there continues to be those who likely maintain this understanding and act accordingly. I’m not offering excuses … I’m suggesting that we haven’t yet done “all we can” to eliminate potentially confusing signals to those who do this job regularly.