FLYING Magazine News Pilot Proficiency Weather

Ice-Contaminated Tailplane Can Bring About Deadly Consequences

Pilots of twin-turboprop aircraft continue to find themselves victims of a stall when icy conditions are a factor.

Friday, December 13, 2024 at 08:52 AM ET

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Pilots of twin-turboprop aircraft continue to find themselves victims of an ice contaminated tailplane stall, perhaps because they may not recognize the signs and understand the differences as compared to a traditional wing stall. [Courtesy: Textron Aviation]

Key Takeaways:

Ice-contaminated tailplane stalls (ICTS) require a recovery action opposite to a traditional wing stall (pull back vs. push forward), a critical distinction often misunderstood by pilots due to widely disseminated, older training materials.
Only a few aircraft, predominantly twin turboprops, are genuinely susceptible to ICTS, which occurs when ice accretes on the tailplane with flaps extended and power changes; most other aircraft are prone to wing stalls in icing conditions.
ICTS remains a serious and often misunderstood threat, exemplified by a 2022 King Air 90 fatal accident explicitly attributed to a tailplane stall in severe supercooled liquid water icing conditions that were difficult to identify through standard weather briefings.

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A tailplane stall can be very violent with the controls quite literally snatched from your hands. Often it takes an enormous amount of back pressure on the controls to break the stall—sometimes even requiring that the copilot assist in this recovery.

However, pilots of twin-turboprop aircraft continue to find themselves victims of an ice contaminated tailplane stall, perhaps because they may not recognize the signs and understand the differences as compared to a traditional wing stall.

Scott Dennstaedt, Ph.D

Scott resides in Charlotte, North Carolina, and flies regularly throughout the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast U.S. He is a CFI and former NWS meteorologist. Scott is the author of "The Skew-T log (p) and Me: A Primer for Pilots" and the founder of EZWxBrief.