Flying in Ice

I was having the ground school portion of a Flight Review with a pilot the other night and the subject of airframe icing came up. The student said that they were terrified of flying in icing conditions. I told them that they should be!

The first thing that I asked was "what criteria do you use when determining whether to make a flight or not when it is winter time." The answer was a 45 degree ground temperature, and that they wouldn't fly higher than 4000 ft.

I would say that is an acceptable first step and should keep you safe, but a deeper analysis into the current weather conditions would be in order. The name of the game is "options". How thick is the cloud layer? Where is the freezing level? What kind of aircraft are you flying and does it have ice protection of any sort? Where are the bases relative to MEA?

The regulations say that we aren't allowed to fly in "known icing conditions." What this basically means to me is that if there are clouds, or precipitation, and the temperature at that altitude is less than freezing - That would be known icing - I GUESS?!?! I think the regulations are a little ambiguous so that it gives some wiggle room.

Bottom Line - if you don't have any anti-ice / de-ice equipment on your airplane, its best to be conservative. Take the car if you have to go that bad.

VFR Flight Plans

I was having a conversation with my mentor and flight instructor this past weekend and we stumbled upon the subject of VFR flight plans. I say "stumbled" when I should really pick a better word, but the subject came up when he asked if one of my current students filed a VFR flight plan on his cross country. I was actually taken aback. Not only was there enough anxiety about making sure I covered everything for the cross country, but this added to the pile!

How could I have skipped over this?

Well, a quick scan of the new syllabus that I am using makes no mention of them. So, wondering if they are still being taught, I called upon my good friend who is in charge of the aviation program at one of the local colleges. He said that they ABSOLUTELY make their students file VFR flight plans and often times call Flight Service to make sure that they are actually following through.

Hmm - My quest for the perfect flight training syllabus continues.

After thinking about it, when my students file a VFR flight plan, I could always just call a Flight Service Station to see if they closed their flight plan to see if they made it to their destination airport instead of trying to figure out what the phone number for the tower is and calling them! Of course, I have asked students to call me when they land so that I know all is well, but that doesn't always happen. I know - This is kind of like mother hen - but that's how I roll...