Originally Posted by
ia1166
There are many other possibilities. Some more likely than this one.
If you are referring to OEB48: Rather unlikely.
For multiple reasons.
Besides what @Lonewolf mentioned:
1. They were in cruise. Freezing would have occcured earlier in all likelyhood.
2. This problem is mostly relevant in climb. In climb Mach number will increase with altitude, thus critical AoA will reduce. At the same time the AoA will increase with decreasing CAS. Therefore with a probe frozen at a constant angle the system will try to correct for increasing Mach. In cruise Mach won't change significantly and Alpha_prot won't usually be reached (especially since there was no significant weather reportde in the area). Only at Alpha_prot and at the same time significantly increasing Mach number the chain described in the Bulletin will be triggered.
Edit: So in summary for this to apply here you need: No freezing in climb, then freezing in cruise, flying at Alpha_Prot, Mach number increasing. And all at the same time and while flying at ~280kts (Alpha_prot @1g should kick in around 170 - 180 kts, so you would have a margin of about 2,4g).
/Edit
3. They had 8 minutes time to:
pull two CB's or
change heading towards lower terrain or
communicate their problems or
select 7700.
Nothing of those happened.
Not saying it is necessarily decompression but Occam's razor has a hard time with the scenario described in the OEB.