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:

Tailplane stalls (ICTS) are a violent and distinct type of stall, primarily affecting certain twin-turboprop aircraft in specific icing conditions (e.g., with flaps extended), and require a counter-intuitive pull-back recovery action.
A widespread misunderstanding, partly fueled by an early NASA video, led many pilots to incorrectly believe all aircraft are highly susceptible to ICTS; however, most aircraft are prone to normal wing stalls, and accidents like Colgan Air 3407 were determined to be wing stalls, not ICTS.
NASA later produced a clarifying video to differentiate between wing and tailplane stalls, but despite these efforts, a 2022 King Air 90 accident was definitively attributed by the NTSB to an ice-contaminated tailplane stall, highlighting the persistent danger in subtly hazardous icing environments.

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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.