An Investigation into Location and Convective Lifecycle Trends in an Ice Crystal Icing Engine Event Database

In the last several years, the aviation industry has improved its understanding of jet engine events related to the ingestion of ice crystal particles. Ice crystal icing has caused powerloss and compressor damage events (henceforth referred to as “engine events”) during flights of large transport aircraft, commuter aircraft and business jets. A database has been created at Boeing to aid in analysis and study of these engine events. This paper will examine trends in the engine event database to better understand the weather which is associated with events. The event database will be evaluated for a number of criteria, such as the global location of the event, at what time of day the event occurred, in what season the event occurred, and whether there were local meteorological influences at play. A large proportion of the engine events occur in tropical convection over the ocean. The Japan / South China Sea is shown to be an event-rich area, and hence a detailed analysis will be presented, studying the location of events inside the cloud structure, and the timing of the event relative to the cloud life-cycle.