Climate Change?
We keep fairly close tabs on our consumption of both fuel and other products needed to keep our medium twin flying safely, on going over our records I have found the following trends. {1} The quantity of ICE-EX and DE-ICEING fluids has increased three fold over the last four years. {2} We have diverted more times and missed approaches more times in these three years than the previous five years. {3} We have cancelled more flights in the last two years than the previous five years, normally due to Pireps of severe iceing, with a few zero braking action reports along with cross winds. {4} Our fairly new ice shields each side of the forward baggae doors will need replacing soon due to damage from the chunks of ice from the props. Now, here is my question, are we just unlucky or is this a trend that others are seeing? For the record most of our flying is in eastern Canada and the US, with a few trips to the Maritimes, we generally only see an ILS when we do divert, most of our approaches being non-precision. Maybe Im just getting more cautious as I age, but I suspect that climate change is the real culprit! Oh, almost forgot, we have diverted more times due to convective activity than I seem to remember, but dont have the number of times documented.Any one out there with coments?