Our company airplanes fly in icing as part of cloud-seeding and atmospheric research operations, so we have some experience in that area. The NTSB is completely missing the boat. They keep trying to dispel the myth of "ice bridging," which is what supposedly happens if you inflate the boots when the ice is too thin and it only stretches the ice. Now you supposedly have a "shell" of ice around your boots and they won't be effective. And guess what? That doesn't happen much, so the NTSB is right about that.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.avweb.com/features/reader-mail/avmail-january-12-2009