2.3 Operating Environment and Aircraft Performance

     I believe one environmental factor that is detrimental to an aircraft's flight characteristics is the accumulation of ice while flying. This is dangerous for many reasons, like stuck flight controls, unbalanced engine blades, and leading-edge ice formations. The weather safety advisory from AOPA Air Safety Foundation (Steuernagle et al. 2008) talks about how ice destroys the smooth flow of air across flight surfaces, causing an increase in drag and a decrease in the ability to create lift. They also say that with this decrease in the ability to create lift, there is an increase in the Angle Of Attack (AOA). The aircraft must be able to shed this ice when it has occurred, and some aircraft are equipped with systems that do just that. There are window heat systems that use electricity to heat the window, much like the window heat in a vehicle. Some also use bleed air from engines to heat the leading edge of the wings or the engine inlet to reduce the possibility of ice forming. The weather safety advisory from AOPA Air Safety Foundation (Steuernagle et al. 2008) also talks about how to avoid the situations that could cause icing when you do not have the ability to heat the critical areas of the aircraft. They call it “Ice Flying”: The Strategy, they say when you are flying VFR try to avoid clouds altogether and when you are flying IFR you must use the multitude of recourses when you suspect there is icing possible like User Access Terminal (DUAT) system, ADDS (Aviation Digital Data Service), and AOPA Online to name a few resources. If you look at the chart I have down below from the weather safety advisory from AOPA Air Safety Foundation (Steuernagle et al. 2008), you can see that the number of incidents relative to the number of flight hours seems a little off. You would think that the pilots with more hours would think about icing while doing their preflight checks or while flying, but it shows pilots with over one thousand flight hours have almost half of the icing incidents. It’s almost like they have gotten complacent over the years.






Steuernagle, J. S., Roy, K. R., Wright, D. W., & Hummel, K. H. (2008, April 1). Aircraft Icing. AOPA. https://www.aopa.org/-/media/files/AOPA/Home/Pilot-Resources/ASI/Safety-Advisors/sa11.pdf


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