Blog post 9.2 Weather Hazards

     Unfortunately I cannot find an accurate statistic of just how many plane crashes have been caused due to icing, if you want consider research done by wiki, you could say 44 incidents and accidents. If you wanted to use a number provided by "Scientific American" Ice accounts for approximately 9.2% of all fatal air carrier accidents (Borrell, 2009). Nevertheless, icing conditions IS considered a major flight hazard to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and I feel as though it poses the greatest risk to aviation operators.
According to weather.gov, the conditions that much be met in order to create icing conditions is; Air temperature colder than 0 degrees celcius or colder and supercool liquid water droplets or wet snowflakes (NOAA, n.d.).
Something to note is 14 CFR 91.527 Operating in icing conditions where I beleive some of the most critical points are that, "No pilot may take off an airplane that has frost, ice or snow adhereing to any properllar, windshield, stabilizing or control surface". In addition to this, no pilots will fly under instrument flight rules (IFR) or visual flight rule (VFR) while in the presence of icing conditions (FAA, 2009). 

Some of the precautions that pilots can take to avoid such hazards is avoiding flight where icing conditions are known to exist. Do not fly into rain when temperatures are below 0 degrees, consult the weather office or flight service stations to obtain forecasts (NOAA, n.d.). 

If it just so happens that an aircraft were to get caught up in icing conditions, some of the immediate actions to take are to turn on the heater for the pitot tube, windshield and use approprite deicing meathods such as boots (Cutler, 2017). Depending on how far along the on the flight path, changing direction to steer out of icing conditions  or changing altitude to go above or below where water droplets will not be present (Cutler, 2017).  Lastly staying in contact with ATC to ensure they know icing conditions have been encountered and to let them guide you for the next course of action (Cutler, 2017). 

References

Borrell, B. (2009, February 17). How does ice cause a plane to crash? Scientific American. Retrieved August 29, 2022, from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ice-flight-3407/

Cutler, C. (2017, February 2). How to survive an inadvertent icing encounter. Online Flight Training Courses and CFI Tools. Retrieved August 29, 2022, from https://www.boldmethod.com/learn-to-fly/weather/how-to-survive-an-inadvertent-icing-encounter/

Federal Aviation Administration, F. A. A. (2009, December 1). 14 CFR § 91.527 - operating in icing conditions. Legal Information Institute. Retrieved August 29, 2022, from https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/91.527

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, N. O. A. A. (n.d.). Icing. Icing Hazards. Retrieved August 29, 2022, from https://www.weather.gov/source/zhu/ZHU_Training_Page/icing_stuff/icing/icing.htm