Originally Posted by
Gone Flying
One possibility is...plane returned to the gate, if anyone made a PA as to why, a pax could have snapped a photo of the wing and posted about it online
Yup. Regional pilots have gotten in trouble in recent years, launching with "trivial" ice/frost (even loose, blowing snow flakes) and no de-ice, only to have a PPL or "aviation savvy" civilian send pics to the FAA. I arrived at a plane early one morning and the station manager pulled me aside and said one of the pax was concerned about a little frost on the wings... "OK, so de-ice us". Turns out they were one of those rare warm-weather coastal stations which wasn't required to have a de-ice capability. Hung around drinking Joe until the sun came, then taxied out to the end to thaw the ice in the sunlight, taxied back, got the pax and off we went.