Army Aircraft Icing
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ARMY SAFETY CENTER DATA ANALYSIS
Introduction
The Army operates one of the largest, most comprehensive safety programs
in the world. The program is designed to create safe air and ground operations
and to promote safe practices by military and civilian personnel both on and off
duty. The mission of the Army Safety Center, which is located at Fort Rucker,
Alabama, is to enhance combat readiness through proactive risk management to
prevent accidents. The Safety Center has staff responsibility for administering the
Army Safety Program and helping commanders integrate risk management into
all that the Army does. The Safety Center supports the Army commanders by
providing them with timely, accurate information on hazards and risks that they
can use to make informed decisions.
The Army Safety Office maintains a database of all Army aircraft accidents
and incidents from FY1985 to the present. Information contained in this database
was obtained from DA Form 2397-11-R, Technical Report of U.S. Army Aircraft
Accident Part XII--Weather/Environmental Data, and DA Form 2397-AB-R, the
Abbreviated Aviation Accident Report (AAAR). These forms must be filled out
after each aircraft accident.
A search of this database turned up 255 icing-related accidents in the FY85
FY99 time period. The search was conducted by querying on Aircraft Icing (DA
Form 2397-11-R, Block 10 and DA Form 2397-AB-R, Block 17c), or Significant
Weather such as sleet and freezing rain (DA Form 2397-11-R, Block 8 and DA
Form 2397-AB-R, Block 17b[1]). A review of this 255-icing-related-incident-
and-accident dataset indicated that only 172 accidents were confirmed as genuine
icing-related accidents by the narrative summary. However, icing could not be
ruled out as a factor in the remaining accidents, so they were not eliminated from
the icing related dataset.
The objective of this investigation was to analyze this dataset to see what it
reveals about the nature and frequency of the Army aviation icing problem. A
hindrance to quantifying the impact of icing on Army aviation is that the Avia-
tion Safety Office's risk management information system does not contain infor-
mation on missions cancelled because of icing (aborted missions are included in
the database).
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