Safety aides chide FAA for ignoring warnings on ice

[RamboLiberal]

Source: Buffalo News

Tougher regulations are needed to protect planes flying in the kind of icy conditions that possibly downed a Continental Connection flight in Clarence Center Thursday, federal safety officials have said, again and again, for more than a decade.

But the Federal Aviation Administration has never heeded the safety officials’ repeated warnings that more needs to be done about the risks that ice can pose to propeller planes.

That’s proved frustrating for the National Transportation Safety Board, which first recommended improved icing regulations in their “Most Wanted Transportation Safety Improvements” in 1997 and then added to those recommendations several times over the years.

“The pace of the FAA0s activities in response to these recommendations remains unacceptably slow, despite recent encouraging action,” Steven Chealander, the safety board member who is currently in Buffalo to investigate the crash of Continental Flight 3407, told a Senate committee last April.



Read more: http://www.buffalonews.com/515/story/579313.html