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Old 1st Jan 2013, 11:00
  #129 (permalink)  
Chris Scott
 
Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: Blighty (Nth. Downs)
Age: 77
Posts: 2,107
Received 4 Likes on 4 Posts
Dozy,
Thanks for the useful gen on the Thales probes, and the conic plate mods.

Inconveniently, neither of the accidents you mention were caused by icing of a heated pitot probe, as Lyman and Turbine_D have pointed out.

LIke them, I wonder if the location of the probes needs to be reviewed, and if the slimmer nose of the A320 may be a factor. Also, I sometimes used to ponder, during my walkrounds, on the pros and cons of locating Pitots 1 & 2 at precisely symmetrically-opposite positions on the fuselage (Pitot 3 being the odd one out). Then I would remind myself that the same applied to the AoA probes. It seemed to me that this might be a recipe for (roughly) simultaneous ice accretion of numbers 1 & 2.

Can anyone cite an accident prior to AF447 that was related to the icing of a properly-heated pitot probe or AoA probe? Right now, I can't think of one, nor of a type that regularly experienced UAS problems in any flight-phase.

Happy New Year everyone and, for those who practise, safe landings!


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