Real Pilot Story: Icing Encounter

I knew there was a cold front out there but I figured I could either avoid the cold front by staying behind it or delay to miss it we won seven four three seven five labor with you its own oven for three survived limited on their center edge there something disturbing about seeing you know a wall of clouds that I'm flying towards and looking back on it of course that that should have set off a whole lot more alarm bells but I was like yeah you know I'm going to be landing well before I get to that that cloud front I'm going to just continue on through and just be prepared the first 10 of any kind of problem we had was the fact that he was having trouble holding altitude there was a lot of updrafts rom mountains and he kept breaking his altitude because the cloud layer was right below me I did start to edge up a little bit to stay clear of the clouds eventually getting scolded by the controller and for three seven five eleven dicier four hundred feet I am still trying to say I'm actually in clouds here so kinda I maybe get up to nine thousand I don't get close okay we got asked me for a deck that traffic got heavier sending to nine so good maintain Niner thousand therefore three some bubbling don't probably my will be exact well okay you know this is this is still under well under control on clear of clouds no big deal and I'm right next to the airport and that's when I was looking over at the temperature gauging went well its degree below freezing that means I've got freezing conditions below me in those clouds and but I figured I'm going down through it it's only one degree below freezing I've got to have the freezing level down below me somewhere at that point I requested the weather from the air traffic controller little did I know that air traffic controllers really don't have weather information in front of them I don't have the weather survey call flight service and get that this is clear lumps on it I guess you would cleave no sir you need to call flight service get the weather I don't have the letter here from Bedford how far a pilot so I told the controller I was going to descend as quickly as I could looking for the the freezing level to get down through it we know we'd like a 3-2 GPS if I could into record birth we sometimes in your discretion maintain 4505 lay my mana go ahead and move down see if I can't get into the warmer weather ready bad idea cold fronts in front of me do I really want to try you know crossing over the cold front losing five or six degrees there I'm already below freezing I'm going to gain ice on the way down do I want to gain more ice as I go through that and still go searching for the freezing level out at the bottom of that unbeknownst to me the freezing level at that point went all the way into the ground I was able to maintain 4,000 feet for a couple of couple of minutes and that's when I noticed that my airspeed was was dropping see I was I was in hard IFR at that point I couldn't even really see the wing struts very well let alone how much ice was accumulating either on the wings or the wings struts Lima so my limited I am unable to maintain 4,500 here okay I can't give any lower than that that area sir if you want to climb up a bit to get established in good climb up I was slowly drifting down and I got down to about 3,500 feet at that point maybe 34 and I you know just didn't want to lose any more altitude cuz I knew there was a ridge line below me somewhere around 3200 feet you know I was trying hard to not lose any more altitude when all of a sudden I heard a clattering either I ran through a cell of ice or my instructors also later said it could have been that the ice was breaking away but I heard this massive clattering the attitude indicator just just spun airspeed indicator dropped to zero the heading indicator started rotating the turn coordinator showed a full deflection so at that point I knew I was in an unusual attitude he went through the clouds lost altitude I found out later that actually had iced up so badly that their plane one inverted on him in the clouds he was watching these trees go by and hillside as he was coming down that's the mental image that still gives me sweats at times these trees maybe 1,500 feet in front of the airplane and you know me heading right towards them somewhere in there was where he he asked if I wanted to declare an emergency and I said well yeah I believe I yeah I have a high I'm definitely clearing an emergency they might be afraid to declare an emergency you know they don't know if it's paperwork or I want to be embarrassed because they're doing this or whatever even though they haven't declared emergencies we can de Klerk form Lima I can I have vector try T vector to the code yeah actually sir I lost in radar contact I've got to t9 that shows up on my GPS pretty close okay that's right behind the last position I had that would be about six o'clock to you and eight miles if you want to turn back and head that way actually we decided to try to get him into Somerset which is right behind him just most the icing reports the heavier icing reports Network East to his position because of the front moving through I kind of flew along in VFR conditions staying clear of the clouds towards where the GPS said the airport would be we were on the phone with the airport manager he reported they had a heavy crosswind out her you know I think 40 plus small are cross wind down her as I tried to line up for final on the runway I noticed that I had the rudder in all the way to the left and I was still drifting off centerline so obviously the wind was blowing faster than the airplane was able to adjust for and about that time the controller came back and said I've got the weather for you and sometime I can tell you they can they know the runway it's stuck if I got ready nice that was trying to figure out some better option than landing on this you know this short strip with drifting snow in the middle of nowhere and that's when the controller was talking about some other Airport to the north at point three seven five eleven if you want we can get try to get you up to a Johnstown that's just the north eastern position now if you want to give that a try they got a tower up there and as luck would have it that Airport was located north of where my sectional map cut off so I wasn't so sure about it and then he gave me Johnstown right now and their observation is showing ones two eight zero to one with gusts to two six we got a half a mile this badly up there with light snow and freezing fog showing 300 overcast so it had been a little bit on the ceiling up there later we got anything better and about the same time my Reiter associate was on the phone with Altoona getting their latest weather report we had a Colgan pilot come off of Altoona and he advised that he had good visibility on the climb out and the winds rather north right that right down the center line of the runway runway 3-0 up there you know it was just let you know the voice from God going you could survive this there is a way to get out of this and be alive I think that was a big help and over here another pilots home okay I just took off the weather's good here you can get in here so I told the controller at that point that I would I would make it to there but there was a ridge line between me and Altoona she solo going over the ridge line that I actually had to start reading them off I'd get a position on them look at the charts it was rauner we had to start giving tower heights and tower positions relative to the last position we have our transmitting tower at blue knob which is just west of Altoona and when he went by that area I think we figured he was 60 to 80 feet below the top of the radio tower when he went by that was when I started noticing ahead of me that the ground was rising and the cloud layer was not so I was going to have to go back up into the soup went into the heart IFR conditions got up to about 4,000 it was just estimating the speed of the air airplane at that point by the sound of the propeller you know one of those things I remember them making us do but never thinking that I would actually have to we were talking about it afterwards and Stacy told me that was the first time she ever thought that people were going to die at that point the radar associates watch informed supervisor standing behind be Washington form to get the next sector over Tyrone sector he's watching that same area he's watching to see if he pops up all right four through seven finally I'm certain get the hit on your transplant again going at the ident button will make sure that you and so I started descent you know sort of a controlled descent keeping my air speed up and eventually I broke free of the clouds and I said okay good well at least I'm clear the clouds I'm not going to accumulate any more ice I'm able to maintain altitude eventually I I spotted the airport it was just you know life was very good one of those things about with the landing was that you know I had an airspeed indicator that didn't work I wasn't sure exactly how much ice ice was still on the airplane I could see out I could see I had you know about an inch of ice rind snow on the on the wings and the struts what I did and especially because I had playing a runway there as I just said you know I'm not going to change a thing because I'm flying so I'm going to get down to like like 100 or 200 feet and make sure I'm over the edge of the runway before I change anything that way if anything goes wrong at least I've got a runway underneath of me once I got over the edge of the runway I just pulled off power didn't apply any flaps didn't didn't do much of anything else except reduce power and then just let the airplane kind of drift down and land as I later found out that's that's one of the big things to do is you know if you're flying the airplane and you've got problems don't change much unless you absolutely have to because apparently people apply flaps and that changes the aerodynamics and makes you nose over into the ground at that point I just you know I landed slowed the airplane down taxied off thanked the air controller and went over to a parking place shut down the airplane the big decision points where that could have made this little flight a whole lot less stressful were first off I should have taken some more time to look up the weather and check out some of the the PI reps and there weren't a lot of icing reports going at that time but I could have at least seen them and maybe pre-planned some some alternates at that point the second decision point would have been when I noticed that the clouds were above the level of the airplane and knowing that I'm in an airplane without known icing I should have probably diverted at that point after that the next decision point would have been when I was sitting on top of a cloud layer that I knew was six or seven thousand feet thick and going I can find a freezing layer down below me it's not it's not that far below freezing um yeah that's that's generally a bad idea um you know it's one thing if you're already stuck in the soup and you notice some freezing and you think okay you know there's no weather front there's no weather fronts around me maybe I can descend and find a freezing layer below me or maybe I can go up and get clear of clouds but by then you're you're already in trouble so that's there it's much simpler if you're clear of clouds and you notice you're below freezing stay clear of clouds

Channel: Air Safety Institute

Views: 229,626

Rating: 4.8926687 out of 5

Keywords: air, safety, institute, aopa, airplane, plane, flight, flying, ga, pilot, student, training, mistake, emergency, vfr, ifr, vmc, imc, weather, wx, brief, cross, country, declare, accident, crash, aerodynamics, cessna, 172, pennsylvania, penn, pa

Id: jHm4itwxpVY

Length: 12min 48sec (768 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 13 2016