Reply #124: ATC is not NTSB

[MajorChode]

ATC sits either in a very dark room or inside a control tower. They only possible way they know if there is icing or not is if a pilot tells them. Icing conditions are sometimes very fleeting and unpredictable. It's very difficult for the NTSB to make positive icing determinations in such cases because the post crash fire has a tendency to destroy the evidence.

All that being said, I personally don't believe icing was a factor in the Connell crash. It appears as if Connell kept trying to salvage a bad approach. This is evident all the way through even though the controller was trying to advise him to break off the approach. What is really telling is Connell's request to execute a 360. I don't mean to piss on a dead man's grave, but no competent instrument pilot would ever even request such a bonehead move, much less attempt it. I suspect he simply lost it in IMC conditions and got into an unusual attitude from which he couldn't recover.