The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association Air Safety Institute (ASI) has released a new episode in its Accident Case Study video series about a Cirrus SR22 and a Bonanza A36. Both crashed when the pilots flew into deteriorating conditions and encountered icing they could not escape.
Accident Case Study: Trapped in Ice recreates the events that led to two ill-fated flights in April 2018. The pilots and passengers departed under what they perceived were manageable IFR conditions. But a large swath of hazardous icing conditions and mountain obscuration in IMC proved to be no match for the pilots or their airplanes, which were not anti-icing or deicing equipped.
“These accidents serve as sober reminders that we need to use all available weather information, as current as possible, especially when planning a flight in conditions favorable for in-flight icing,” said ASI’s Senior Vice President Richard McSpadden.
Accident Case Study: Trapped in Ice uses FAA ATC radio communication transcripts, NTSB documentation, and video animation to recreate the dynamics of the situation and track the accident chain of events.
View the 20-minute accident case study:
“No Match” may have been used incorrectly, but we all got the point.
The pilots and planes “were no match for the weather”. Hire a proofreader that has graduated junior high school.
I often wonder if in situations like this in which a pilot realizes conditions are becoming dangerous, he/she does not want to alarm or lose face with his/her passengers who are listening in to communications. Declaring an emergency or simply reporting deteriorating conditions to ATC in very stark terms can be embarrassing or might upset the passengers. We all need to remember that getting safely to the ground dwarfs these concerns, and we need to call it like it is, not how we’d like it to be!
“No match” is used incorrectly in this article. It should be “overmatched” as the ice and obscure mountains were much more than the aircraft were able to handle.
You are absolutely correct. “No match” conveys a different meaning. Retired College Instructor.