Scary Icing ATC tape

Mxsmanic wrote:

Dan writes:

I suppose hindsight is 20/20, but her comments of "I just dropped at
2000 feet per minute with uncommnaded rolls.... I have no idea what
happened..... let's continue 2.5 hours to Bangor" don't really seem to
make much sense to me.

If a plane did that and I didn't have any idea why, I'd lean towards
getting it on the ground ASAP.

I suppose at some point, she must have realized that the ice was
coming off...

It's not clear that she ever even thinks about ice;

You must have an amazing talent to know what someone might be "thinking"
about.


I don't recall her
ever mentioning it. Only ATC talks about that.

So what? If I picked up some ice, I'm not sure I would be talking about it
either.

Taylor writes:

You must have an amazing talent to know what someone might be "thinking"
about.

I know what they talked about. The controller mentioned icing many
times; the pilot never said anything about it that I can recall. She
didn't appear to be listening. And she didn't seem worried about
picking up ice.

--
Transpose mxsmanic and gmail to reach me by e-mail.

Mxsmanic wrote:

Taylor writes:

You must have an amazing talent to know what someone might be
"thinking" about.

I know what they talked about. The controller mentioned icing many
times; the pilot never said anything about it that I can recall. She
didn't appear to be listening. And she didn't seem worried about
picking up ice.

You weren't listening very closely. She said that she had turned on the
heat and boots, and that is likely what allowed her to regain control.

Icing is a well-known problem with Caravans, and the FAA has recently
issued some ADs as a result of the number of icing accidents and
incidents. Any regular Caravan pilot would be well aware of the
problem.

By the time the controller was mentioning icing, the pilot had already
taken the necessary actions, and had things under control.

Consider that the plane was probably cruising along on autopilot, when
the autopilot shut off and the plane went into a sudden dive. The pilot
would be shaken out of lethargy, and be trying to sort out what likely
happened. The uneven loss of ice buildup perhaps explained the wild
gyrations, with the pilot struggling for control. It's amazing she had
the presence of mind to communicate with everything else going on.

Sounds to me like she stayed very flustered even after regaining control,
and was beginning to realize that she should have realized it was ice long
before she finally did something about it. She regained the composure in her
voice, but she was still clearly confused-at least not thinking clearly-for
quite a while.

Even after regaining control, she did not switch to 121.5. And with a high
wing and not being able to see any ice the boots might have missed, deciding
to continue for 2.5 hours was a foolish decision, especially with the
information provided by ATC that there was serious potential to pick up more
ice on the way.

JMO

mike

----- Original Message -----
From: "Dan"
Newsgroups: rec.aviation.piloting
Sent: Friday, February 02, 2007 11:23 PM
Subject: Scary Icing ATC tape


I suppose hindsight is 20/20, but her comments of "I just dropped at
2000 feet per minute with uncommnaded rolls.... I have no idea what
happened..... let's continue 2.5 hours to Bangor" don't really seem to
make much sense to me.

If a plane did that and I didn't have any idea why, I'd lean towards
getting it on the ground ASAP.

I suppose at some point, she must have realized that the ice was
coming off...

--Dan

On Sun, 4 Feb 2007 10:07:21 -0500, "mike regish"
wrote:


Even after regaining control, she did not switch to 121.5.

Why should she? Staying where they were seemed to work fine for all
involved, and even generated a freezing level PIREP.

On Sun, 4 Feb 2007 10:07:21 -0500, "mike regish"
wrote:


Even after regaining control, she did not switch to 121.5.




You only tune to 121.5 if you're not already talking to someone.

She had things under control. She could have switched at talked at will to
ATC without the whole world listening in. Nearly half of that audio occurs
after she regained control.

mike

"B A R R Y" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 4 Feb 2007 10:07:21 -0500, "mike regish"
wrote:


Even after regaining control, she did not switch to 121.5.

Why should she? Staying where they were seemed to work fine for all
involved, and even generated a freezing level PIREP.

Why would you think she was not talkng on the correct frequency?

On 2/2/2007 11:23:08 PM, "Dan" wrote:

If a plane did that and I didn't have any idea why, I'd lean towards
getting it on the ground ASAP.

Back when this first happened, I talked about it with a chief flight
instructor who used to fly Caravans for a FedEx regional carrier. He told me
the pressure to complete cargo flights is great.

I suppose at some point, she must have realized that the ice was
coming off...

From what I recall, at 6,000 feet this pilot was in air that was above
freezing and also below the cloud layer.

--
Peter

On 2 Feb 2007 13:51:44 -0800, "Jay Honeck" wrote:

This is the audio tape of a Fed Ex Caravan pilot who tangled with some
severe icing conditions.

http://www.alexisparkinn.com/photoga...78L-Mayday.mp3

(It's a good-sized .mp3 file, so be patient while it downloads...)

This was given to me by our local FAA safety guy, to share with our
airport user's group. The stark terror in her voice is chilling, and
really points out how quickly things can go bad.

Was it just me, or was the controller excessively blase about the
Mayday call?