Q400 Icing?

Another Airliner Down


I woke up after midnight to the news of the Continental commuter flight crash about 6miles short of the Buffalo, NY airport a little after ten PM.

Of course the media--self proclaimed aviation experts because they RIDE commercial airliners with some frequency--is spazzing out offering wild eyed conjecture and interviewing anyone they can find that can spell the word airplane.

I did a Yahoo map search myself and they're not only calling the town of "Clarence Center" simply "Clarence," but the crash scene on "Long Street" is referred to as "Long Road" as of 2:01 AM.

Of course there's the obligatory report of "fire coming out of one engine" and all the other crap that you hear before the final results are available.

The weather on the ground at both Newark where the flight originated and Buffalo where it was due to arrive a few minutes after it crashed was a sloppy misty snow at about 32 degrees F, but based on the weather conditions I see on the NOAA Aviation Weather website there were icing advisories at altitude across the entire state of New York.

The Bombardier Q400 turboprop involved is one of the new generation of "non-jet" commuters that is designed to deliver quiet "near jet" cabin noise levels and cruising speeds close to the little commuter jets they're designed to compete with. It has a Cat II autopilot and instrument landing capability in all but the very worst of conditions (Cat III being worst.)

The weird and dangerous thing about icing in flight is that it can build up on the aircraft while you're at altitude and cruising speed and you'll never know that it's there until you start slowing the airplane down and the extra weight and the effect of the change in the shape of your wings and fuselage due to the ice buildup become apparent.

To offset the problem of ice build up fancy private airplanes and all commercial aircraft have "deicing boots" on the leading edge of the wings and heated propeller blades to keep ice from building up while things are whirling and spinning around at 20,000 feet. Unfortunately the pilot has to actually turn on the deicing systems and then those systems have to work--something not necessary on every flight so the systems could be inoperative or working at less than optimal performance.

My heart goes out to the friends and relatives of 50+ lives that were lost this evening, but I just wish the media would shut up and wait for some tangible data--I say something broke and Icing was possibly an issue--while they leave the bystanders and self-proclaimed experts and armchair quarterbacks to keep their inane opinions and mindless conjecture to themselves.

UPDATE...5:31 AM

The descriptions of the crash scene indicate a "vertical" crash profile rather than a long sliding crash scene entry...giving further creedence to the idea of icing problems or even possibly an engine failure on approach causing the plane to stall, stop flying, and dive into the ground from low altitude.