The Challenges Identifying Weather Associated With Jet Engine Ice Crystal Icing

This paper presents the latest findings resulting from ongoing research on jet engine ice crystal icing. It specifically focuses on the challenges for pilots to identify and potentially avoid weather associated with this type of engine icing. The case will be made that jet engine power loss and damage events are not only still occurring, but the overall number of events per year is increasing. Several case studies will be presented to illustrate that each event can vary significantly when viewed from the flight deck even though weather conditions are similar for each. Findings will be presented related to new events that are occurring on engines that were not previously affected along with new engine symptoms. Ongoing meteorological research has shed new light on how to identify weather associated with engine events utilizing infrared satellite imagery combined with atmospheric temperature profiles. Statistics related to ice crystal exposure distances in convective cloud utilizing total air temperature (TAT) anomaly data will also be presented. Finally, thoughts will be presented on the development of tools to help pilots while in-flight, to better assess clouds potentially associated with ice crystal engine icing.