Iberia IB6166, BOS-MAD, 2nd Dec, Cowboys !!!!

[Just an Engineer]

According to the AIB reports wot I have read. IF a "light a/c flies through a "Heavy Rainstorm", the pilot/engineer should re-lubricate the Flight Surface hinges/linkages, ASAP. As an "assumption", one would think that this is SOP "accross the board"....so that any "DRY" snow which lodges in the hinge area could freeze as being in contact with the lubricant, and of course any "Fluid" contaminated surfaces. Or am I Totally and Utterly wrong?

As nobody else has answered this yet…

There is no requirement on larger aircraft that I have worked on to re-lubricate hinges after flying through heavy rain. I suspect this is due to light aircraft having simpler/cheaper hinge mechanisms that are more susceptible to ice freezing etc.

[naceur]

Deicing

imagine the plane crashed, that could happen
the discussion will be different
never pull the devil from the tail
extrados should be perfectly clean
our lives depend on this
as a captain i will accept any remark coming from anyone
why not
one day it happened to me during a winter stop in finland
after inspection i decided not to deice
one of the ground staff invited me to check the extrados
i did on his ladder
almost half an inch non visible ice glued to the wings
we deiced and get back home safely
many thanks to this guy
sorry about my poor english

[Empty Cruise]

How many aircraft have been lost due to lack of anti-icing application?

How many aircraft have been lost due to anti-icing application (apart from light-SEP-types trying on type II/IV for size)?

If I'm a test pilot when I depart with thickened fluids on the wings - so is everyone else doing it - and hey, we've not lost an aircraft for that reason ever.

Part of the Aged Wisdom Certificate exam is the ability to

a) Respect empirical evidence, and
b) Multiply the likelyhood of an event with its worst possible outcome and then make a timely decision.

Good luck with the re-sit

[Tandemrotor]

naceur

Good and pertinent post. Ice is frequently invisible to anyone viewing from more than 2 or 3 feet away. Sometimes only touching will do!

Good English too.

[411A]

According to the AIB reports wot I have read.

The AIB don't manufacture aeroplanes nor do they write the maintenance specifications.
As such, their 'recommendations' aren't worth the paper they're printed on in this regard to light aircraft.

IE: totally unnecessary with US manufactured types, others, possibly.

[M.Mouse]

And with that post 411A sums up nicely why so many of us read his posts and quickly move on having decided there is no end to his pompous, arrogant and generally wrong ideas.

[SR71]

Whats the aeronautical equivalent of sailing close to the wind?

A number of contributors don't seem to be familiar with the metaphor.

[Ashling]

There will always be those too arrogant to appreciate their own fallibility. This thread illustrates this quite nicely as a number of people seem to live under the dillusion that the whole clean wing concept is an over reaction to cater for those with less judgement than their own. Given the proven severity of a mis judgement in this area I find their approach alarming at best.

[FullWings]

There will always be those too arrogant to appreciate their own fallibility. This thread illustrates this quite nicely as a number of people seem to live under the dillusion that the whole clean wing concept is an over reaction to cater for those with less judgement than their own. Given the proven severity of a mis judgement in this area I find their approach alarming at best.

Well said!

I am quite amazed by some of the posts on this thread, in the vein of "we got away with it (sometimes ) in the past, what's the problem?"

Every aircraft manufacturer, aviation authority and airline of any note have unequivocally laid down procedures (and the law) to be followed in the event of frozen deposits on the airframe, i.e. get rid of it all except for certain types in very limited specified areas. What's so hard to understand about that?

[Jaxon]

To amos2,

My pleasure:
Perhaps the easiest example I can make is actually quite routine - and it is your duty/rest requirements. (Somebody correct me if you are an experienced pilot who has never experienced either of the two following situations…) …when you and perhaps your whole crew would have been quite able to safely exceed one such limit or another yet did not for the obvious legal reasons; conversely, has anybody not found themselves in a situation where continued duty was within the legal limits but you and/or others of your crew were entering an unsafe condition of fatigue?

How about a flight where your medical expired a couple days ago and you are now illegal to fly – are you going to call this unsafe, or is it just illegal?

How about taking 12 weeks off for a grand vacation and without much thought, beginning your return to the cockpit with a freshly minted new guy with unbelievably little experience and speaking with a very difficult accent… and the weather is looking pretty rough… and there is some MEL item in play that has a significant procedure you are unfamiliar with… …and, and, and… all of this is legal – but is it safe?



Hand solo, and others,

Consider this:

Sitting at the terminal (with a clean aircraft) in Boston one cold day, I notice that it has started to snow, the snow, airframe skin, fuel, OAT from the surface on up are all –8*C or colder. The wind is 320/15kts. The terminal is acting as a wind block and the snow is settling onto the aircraft…

…sitting at the next gate over is a guy who uses the term “cheerio” even when not talking about a breakfast cereal. He faces the same conditions and requests deicing, and we both begin a taxi to the active at the same time…

…as we clear the terminal ramp and receive the full prevailing wind our airframe is relieved of the fresh snow that had settled on us at the gate and the snow begins to intensify – yet our cold and dry airframe gives no hold for the cold flakes blowing over and around us, we could sit out here for an hour and have no change in our airworthiness what-so-ever…

Now, who is in a safer condition as 15 minutes (or more) tick by before ‘line up’, the bloke who had his aircraft squirted with fluid and is now a snow magnet hoping he will get airborne before the whole mixture starts to freeze on his aircraft – or the “cowboy” who has no questions about airframe ice or holdover time?



rogerg:

The exact scene above has played out countless times, obviously, a lot more in the past with the advent of the ‘catchall’ SOPs in place today. Deicing by definition requires snow/ice to actually be present on the airframe, yet today we see clean airframes getting hosed down simply because some snow is falling. Anti-icing is supposed to keep the stuff from adhering to the airframe – yet today we routinely turn clean airframes into ticking time bombs caught in a race to get airborne… all because it makes certain pilots feel they’ve covered their ass and can’t be accused of being a “cowboy”.

You took a cheap shot at me, which was just all too easy to do but perhaps very difficult to support. Well, can you – support it?


Anybody who is still reading:

Its easy as a pilot to grab onto the SOP, wrap yourself in a blanket that says "safe", and declare anything else to be "unsafe". It goes straight to the heart of an important pilot skill where quickly boiling a situation down to the key question(s) most relevant to managing the flight is what the situation calls for. It makes sense to rely on your SOPs and their proper application in the cockpit and not waste time trying to dissect the reasoning and validity of them. Since as you read this you must now be free of your flight duties you should feel free to think and dissect. From what I read from a few here some people demonstrate no ability to measure and value safety and consider the shades of gray. They are the ones who would judge 24 hours of rest to be safer than 23 and have no ability to figure out how insignificant that distinction would generally be. They might even declare 23 hours of rest to therefore be unsafe.

Happy New Year

“Cowboys are people too”
“Flying will never be safe, but perhaps it can be safe enough”

[Jaxon]

I am quite amazed by some of the posts on this thread, in the vein of "we got away with it (sometimes ) in the past, what's the problem?"

Every aircraft manufacturer, aviation authority and airline of any note have unequivocally laid down procedures (and the law) to be followed in the event of frozen deposits on the airframe, i.e. get rid of it all except for certain types in very limited specified areas. What's so hard to understand about that?

Perhaps you are referring to me?

Your characterization of "got away with it" is just trash talk.
If you take the care to read you can find quite reasonable explanation - and perhaps just a little enlightenment.
The SOP saves us from the few bad decisions that can have fatal consequences while also prohibiting a reasonable and in some cases better course of action. So be it. I comply. I have merely let myself get sucked into this whole out of control thread because a certain mob tried to hang a colleague without a fair trial.

[J.O.]

Sorry Jaxon, but I have to call BS on your argument that the fuel temperature is below -8 C in those conditions. I haven't seen fuel temperatures from the bowser go below freezing in 15 years, and that was with an ambient of -20C or less, not -8C. It just doesn't happen. Please stop making excuses for an action which is not in keeping with best safety practices. You are not making any converts here.

[Jaxon]

J.O.
I'll call BS to your BS. I see it all the time. Are you island hopping in the Carribean? I had a low bulk fuel temperature warning once in cruise last winter, what temperature do you think that juice was an hour after landing?

[J.O.]

How many times do you not add at least 5 times as much fuel to the tanks as you have left on board prior to the next leg? It doesn't happen in my world and the world that the vast majority of airline pilots do their work. And since almost all fuel from the bowser comes in at above freezing, the wings will warm up with that fuel, providing a nice place for falling snow to melt and then freeze in the ambient temperature. There is no way that the Iberia flight didn't add at least 40 tonnes of fuel at probably + 5 C or higher so the point is moot in this case. And once again, please stop trying to make excuses for bad decisions that don't lead to accidents.

[FullWings]

Jaxon,

My comments weren't aimed at you in particular but I think I will have to reply to your most recent post.

Now, who is in a safer condition as 15 minutes (or more) tick by before ‘line up’, the bloke who had his aircraft squirted with fluid and is now a snow magnet hoping he will get airborne before the whole mixture starts to freeze on his aircraft – or the “cowboy” who has no questions about airframe ice or holdover time?

Oh dear.

An aircraft that has been "squirted with fluid" is in a known state and has been through certification trials like this. It is not a safety issue. Also, anti-icing fluid is not known to regularly freeze solid on wing surfaces.

If the fuel in the wings is colder than the dewpoint, you'll get frost forming top and bottom...

…as we clear the terminal ramp and receive the full prevailing wind our airframe is relieved of the fresh snow that had settled on us at the gate and the snow begins to intensify – yet our cold and dry airframe gives no hold for the cold flakes blowing over and around us, we could sit out here for an hour and have no change in our airworthiness what-so-ever…

F**k! I'm lost for words on that one...

There's no such thing as 100% safety without locking the hangar doors and throwing away the key. However, there need not be any more contamination related accidents if pilots just followed 'clean wing' principles to the letter; this is one thing in aviation which (pretty much ) everybody agrees on.

As pilots, we just don't have enough information, both in terms of exactly what the extent and type of the contamination is and what effect(s) it will have on the airframe. So we de-ice, then maybe anti-ice as well to get back to a known state where we can apply holdover times, etc.

If you're still not convinced, talk to an aerodynamicist or a performance engineer and see their hair stand on end...

[Jaxon]

To what temperature does anything that isn't warm blooded or radioactive adjust to and stabilize at?

If an aircraft cold soaks for 12 hours on a ramp at -10*C, exactly WHAT temperature do YOU think that plane and everything in it is busy stabilizing at?

If you spend many hours cooling the fuel in your tanks to -25*C and then refuel from a truck that is holding fuel that has stabilized at the average ambient temperature of say... -5*C... would you care to guess what temperature range your fuel will be upon refueling?

[Jaxon]

As pilots, we just don't have enough information, both in terms of exactly what the extent and type of the contamination is and what effect(s) it will have on the airframe. So we de-ice, then maybe anti-ice as well to get back to a known state where we can apply holdover times, etc.

If you're still not convinced, talk to an aerodynamicist or a performance engineer and see their hair stand on end...

What do you not understand???
I've stated I support the SOP for its improvement in the overall safety statistics.
I've stated I do not and have not taken chances with contaminated flight surfaces.

I understand that you were raised with the comfortable blanket of having the decision made for you with the SOP and that making the decision I've made example of is beyond the cover of your blanket with which you feel so safe. I have observed the transition to this attitude you have across the younger ranks which has been artificially created by the SOP. Just as automation dilutes pilot skill, the SOP here has diluted your ability to see and think outside the little box you feel comfortable in. It doesn't much matter in that the SOP rules, right? It only matters when the inability to see outside the little SOP box has you crucifying a colleague with a label of "unsafe" - when in fact he may have been safer and just more experienced.

[Clandestino]

Guys, you're simply not living in a Jaxonworld; where every snowflake is perfectly dry and simply falls off the airframe as soon as the take-off roll is started, where you can have either snowfall or frost but not both of them at the same time, where fuel in the bowser is always below -5° C; where SOPs are just for the feeble-minded unable to make decisions for their own, where flightcrews are so underworked that reducing their rest period has no effect on their fatigue or subsequently on the safety of the flightops, where flying with expired medical is not a big deal - hey it's just illegal and not unsafe.

However, in the real world, many people were saved from suffering the massive blunt force trauma by the requirement that V2 has to be at least 1.2 Vs of the clean wing, for given weight and flaps, so they got away even when they were unknowingly flying at anywhere between 1.19 and 1.01 of actual Vs for 'slightly' iced wing.

EDIT: Of course, in the real world there are not many pilots who use V2min as their V2 and there are even less of them who stick to V2 at climb-out. And this increased margin may reinforce the belief that every tiny bit of snow falls off, since rotation and climb-out feel normal.

[Hand Solo]

Good post! Lets take a small wager here. Who thinks that Jaxon has any experience flying a big jet with a critical wing? I've got ten of her Majestys finest pounds that this joker hasn't flown anything bigger than a Seneca at a flying school. This guys blatant lack of knowledge of icing conditions and basic physics tells me he's a danger to himself and anyone who has the misfortune to be on any aircraft he flies.

[Hand Solo]

Just to add some flesh to the bones of my previous post:

Sitting at the terminal (with a clean aircraft) in Boston one cold day, I notice that it has started to snow, the snow, airframe skin, fuel, OAT from the surface on up are all –8*C or colder.

How do you know the temperature of the snow?
How do you know the temperature of the airframe skin, given that no aircraft other than experimental types have airframe skin temperature sensors?

…as we clear the terminal ramp and receive the full prevailing wind our airframe is relieved of the fresh snow that had settled on us at the gate

How do you know you were 'relieved' of the fresh snow and it has not simply melted, or perhaps thawed and refrozen?

the snow begins to intensify – yet our cold and dry airframe gives no hold for the cold flakes blowing over and around us, we could sit out here for an hour and have no change in our airworthiness what-so-ever…

Are you cold and dry? Or are you cold and wet? Have you been out to check? What if you were wet and are still -8C and have now frozen?

Now, who is in a safer condition as 15 minutes (or more) tick by before ‘line up’, the bloke who had his aircraft squirted with fluid and is now a snow magnet hoping he will get airborne before the whole mixture starts to freeze on his aircraft – or the “cowboy” who has no questions about airframe ice or holdover time?

To repeat what was previously said, the guy who has had his 'squirt' and is in a known condition is far safer than the cowboy who is applying all manner of false logic and bad science to convince himself that he knows his wing icing state.
Jaxon everything I read that you post further convinces me that you really have very little understanding of basic science and airframe icing. I can only hope that whoever is in the other seat of the aircraft you fly knows more than you.