Aug 3 2009
From The Space Library
The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced the finalization of amended certification standards requiring makers of transport category aircraft to have automatically activating icing-protection systems or to provide a method of alerting pilots to turn on the aircraft’s icing-protection system. FAA Administrator J. Randolph “Randy” Babbitt explained that the new rule added another level of safety to prevent the occurrence of a situation in which the pilots of an airplane were unaware of ice accumulation on the craft or did not think ice accumulation on the aircraft was significant enough to warrant activation of ice protection equipment. The fatal crash of an American Eagle ATR 72 near Roselawn, Indiana, in 1994, had initiated a decade of research by the FAA, NASA, and other entities, leading to the new rule. Ice build-up on the American Eagle’s wings had caused the crash.
U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, “FAA Mandates Timely Activation of Ice Protection Systems for New Designs,” FAA news release, 3 August 2009, http://www.faa.gov/news/press_releases/news_story.cfm?newsId=10679 (accessed 12 September 2011); John Croft, “FAA Toughens Icing Protection Standards,” Air Transport Intelligence, 4 August 2009.
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