EMB ERJ 145 ER/LR
Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Aircraft Equipment Problem Less Severe; Inflight Event / Encounter Unstabilized Approach
General None Reported / Taken
Aircraft; Company Policy; Procedure
We briefed and set up for a CAT II in icing conditions into ZZZ and conditions were forecast to improve and did in fact improve some prior to our landing but we stayed in a CAT II configuration to landing. In the descent we got multiple caution messages starting with (I think) wing Anit-Ice (A/I) fail; bleed low temp; A/I low capacity and the #1 bleed temp was 'amber'. This happened a few times while we were powered back trying to configure for landing. First Officer attempted to add power (per the company message and also the QRH) to fix the problem but then we were not able to configure for a stabilized approach. These caution messages would come and go with icing conditions. At some point we stopped trying to manage the A/I failure versus the energy of the aircraft to get configured for a stabilized approach. I think we may have gotten the Ice condition A/I inoperative warning at this point. We landed; I wrote of the failures in the logbook explaining that 1: it happens in flight when you are powered back and 2: increasing thrust (as much as we could in a descent trying to configure to land) did not fix the problem. Maintenance took the aircraft and eventually cleared the logbook with a 'could not duplicate' entry in the logbook.My primary reason for reporting this is that due to company guidance (Anti-Ice System Failures company message) and QRH procedures that instruct you to add power (up to the detent I guess; there is no min or max defined?) pilots and mechanics are becoming numb to anti-ice system failures as this issue is far more common in the last few years than it has been in the preceding decade or so. I fear we will eventually ice up an aircraft and stall it on the descent because pilots believe these messages are the new 'normal'.The company message says to direct questions to [a Company resource]; and when he returned my call he told me that; one; he is not an ERJ pilot so he's not current on the system; and two; he is directed to publish that same company message every year to prevent nuisance write ups. He did seem very concerned and passed my concern on. The aircraft must be certified for known ice EVEN AT IDLE THRUST; correct? Per the QRH if you add thrust and it goes away (how much thrust; all the way to the detent; hard to do in a descent which is the primary time when the issue happens!) it is not a problem and should not be written up. In this case I wrote up that it happens in flight and adding thrust did not solve the problem (bleed temp indicator still amber; multiple caution messages etc); and the maintenance action was to test the ice system (I assume via an 'A' test; and conclude that they 'could not duplicate' return to flight. Of course they could not duplicate it because they did not duplicate the conditions. (OAT at -degrees c; thrust near idle; actual moderate icing etc).I've talked to multiple pilots and other check airman about this issue and there are several common threads. One; is that the problem is more common now than it used to be. Two; it doesn't get written up because of the company message implying that it's not a 'real' issue and more of a nuisance problem. Three; many pilots believe there is no risk with an icing failure because it's just an indication problem now; so they neither write it up nor take action to avoid icing. Four; most of us agree that the QRH procedure is not a realistic fix because; either you cannot add thrust (and continue to descend or configure) or often times you have to add so much thrust that you'd have to abandon the arrival or approach. How can there not be a defined minimum N2 that the icing system should operate at? Five; maintenance is aware of the company message as well; so pilots are slowly being trained that if they write it up maintenance is just going to go do an ice test and ops check it good anyway so why bother to write it up?I do know that [I saw] a chart that showed that these failures were going down over time. I think that the question was left at 'is the rate going down based on actual failures or on reported failures?' and the answer was the 'reported failures' are going down. That makes sense to me because I've now talked to many pilots who consider A/I failures (that eventually clear at some point) not worthy of a write up in the logbook per the company message.Another thought I had is that the A/I valves are not getting exercised via the ice test as much as they used to since we switched to a logbook where we no longer log the ice test as complete. How does a crew know whether or not it's first flight of the day on aircraft particularly leaving a hub? I would guess that this test get inadvertently skipped far more often now that we no longer log the ice test and therefore the valves get less 'exercise'.I should have done this report every time this happened to me over the last few years so there would be a better record of it. So I guess I have to be more vigilant to be more vocal over issues like this where I think the airline could have a horribly bad outcome with a stall in icing conditions.
EMB-145 Captain reported concern that flight crews are becoming too accepting of wing anti-ice issues in the fleet.