This is a question that arose after watching Six Feet Under last night. Each episode starts with a death, and last night’s was a woman killed when a chunk of blue ice fell off an airplane on approach. It hit her in the head.
I Googled a bit, but most hits came up with references to Antarctica. There was one hit about a school in England that had been damaged, but that was it.
On the show, the deceased’s husband claimed the airlines like to keep stories about blue ice quiet, and in the story about the English school, the airline responsible refused to pay for the damages.
As I sit right in the approach path for MSP, I am wondering how common blue ice is, and has anyone ever been killed by it?
I can’t tell you if anyone has been killed by blue ice, but I worked in aircraft maintenance for quite a few years and in my company we had strict orders not to allow an aircraft to depart with faulty toilet valves. Normally it shows up as a blue streak on the fuselage which indicates a leaky valve. Once spotted it has to be fixed.
I’m afraid it’s not just for consideration of people on the ground being hit, but a chunk of ice can be ingested into the engines or damage another part of the airframe. I imagine that more attention is now being paid to this problem by all airlines, so you should be pretty safe.
V
My guess would be that the whole thing was inspired by a Spider Robinson joke. I won’t completely spoil the punchline, but it involves a pun on the abbreviation of Intercontinental Ballistic Missile.
I work with a guy that had a chunk of blue ice come through the roof of his house. It came from an older 727 and we are both Boeing employees. He was compesated rather nicely for his trouble and promise to keep quiet. Passenger aircraft (capacity of 89 or more) built since 1991 no longer use blue water. Aircraft toilets now use regular potable water and waste holding tanks. The older aircraft toilets are just fancy porta-potties.