Take off with snow on wing

[Northbeach]

Thread drift - BIG time....................

I’m surprised the moderator(s) have not moved this extensive and ongoing discussion of Air Florida-Palm 90 in Washington DC somewhere else as it has just about completely eclipsed the original post and direction of the thread discussing a recent takeoff with contaminated surfaces.

AirRabbit who obviously has an extensive knowledge base of the facts surrounding Palm 90 in DC, perhaps even worked for the operator or knew those directly involved, presents his position in great detail and with tremendous patience. Perhaps this discussion of the accident deserves its own thread.

With no disrespect to the dead, I am not interested in opening up a new investigation of that accident on this thread.

Let’s see if I understand AirRabbit’s point. It was not snow on the wing that doomed Palm 90, the aircraft had been deiced imperfectly and the wing was covered with ice as it rolled down the departure runway. The 737 pitches up with even a small amount of ice or contamination on the wing, a point that needs to be better understood. What doomed Air Florida was the 737’s pitch up tendency with a contaminated wing of the 737 design combined with ice that was present due to the method and equipment used to “deice” that jet on that day. The accident was not primarily caused by snow accumulation combined with the poor flight crew performance.

So, trying to summarize the multiple posts regarding Air Florida and applying them to the video on the original post I come up with the following. Contamination of any sort on the wing of a commercial T Category jet transport has the potential of rendering the wing incapable of safe flight. Therefore it should be removed prior to flight.

That puts us back to the “clean wing” concept right? Therefore the takeoff video clip that opened up this thread was a dangerous act and an expample of poor airmanship and decision making.