Originally Posted By: Astro14
Originally Posted By: OneEyeJack
That was snow, not hard ice.
What they did was both dangerous and illegal.
The wing was contaminated. Snow, ice, doesn't matter as both disturb the airflow and degrade the performance of the wing. Even after takeoff, it still had snow clinging to it.
The generic term, deicing, is used to describe the removal of ALL contamination from the wing surface.
It's not like it was -20C and 2" of fluff that fell on it during boarding either, some of that was sticking pretty good like it had been on there a while. I guess the pilot could have insisted on getting it cleared off, but chose not too for some reason?