Life Lessons of an Iced-Up Mooney

A flight from Illinois on an average winter day becomes a reminder to not become complacent or let yourself be intimidated by ATC.

John Folk

Monday, July 10, 2023 at 04:59 PM ET

Verified

[Credit: Joel Kimmel]

Key Takeaways:

During a flight to New Jersey, the pilot encountered rapid and severe airframe icing after climbing to 17,000 feet in an attempt to stay above rising cloud tops.
The pilot asserted an emergency descent, overriding ATC's initial hold instruction, and safely descended to lower, warmer altitudes where the ice melted.
Key lessons learned include the importance of acting immediately without panic, prioritizing safety over ATC instructions in an emergency, and conducting more thorough pre-flight weather analysis, especially concerning cloud tops and icing potential.
The experience prompted the pilot to install a TKS anti-icing system on his Mooney, emphasizing the value of equipment upgrades for enhanced safety.

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It was your typical winter day in the Chicago area, cold with the ceiling around 500 feet agl. My wife and daughters were driving to New Jersey to visit family, so this was an awesome excuse for me to fly my Mooney Ovation2 GX—the first one out of the factory with the Garmin G1000 in late 2004—to the east coast and introduce our Brazilian foreign exchange student to his first flight in a small airplane.

This Article First Appeared in FLYING Magazine

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