Ice-Protection Alerting
The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), citing a fatal 2014 crash that it attributed largely to structural icing, is calling for development of a system to automatically alert pilots when ice-protection systems should be activated on certain turbofan airplanes.
In a safety recommendation letter to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the NTSB said that the agency should work with the General Aviation Manufacturers Association (GAMA) to develop the alerting system for use in turbofan airplanes that require a type rating and that are certified for single-pilot operations and flight in icing conditions.
The NTSB sent similar recommendations to GAMA and to the National Business Aviation Association.
The recommendations cited a Dec. 8, 2014, accident in which an Embraer EMB-500 (Phenom 100) crashed on approach to Montgomery County Airpark in Gaithersburg, Maryland, U.S. The airplane struck three houses about 0.75 nm (1.4 km) from …
