@LSLGuy made a distinction between de-icing and anti-icing. How it all works I do not know but that point implies the plane is having two distinct things done to it. Whether one truck can do it or they need a different one for each step I have no idea.
Looked it up on the net. Anti-icing started in Europe first and then in the US in the mid to late 1980’s. I don’t ever remember seeing a plane sprayed with anti-ice. I was working in the office by the time it would have been used.
Some information here about fluids for de-ice and anti-ice.
https://aircrafticing.grc.nasa.gov/2_3_3_1.html
My most recent employer only uses Type 1 fluid which is really only good for de-icing. So if ice is on the plane but no new ice is forming, it is good. If new ice is forming then the fluid just doesn’t last long enough to be able to get airborne before it loses effectiveness. For us then, any active frost means we are grounded. The places our short haul fleet flies to just doesn’t get enough icing days for this policy to be a problem. It also means I don’t know much about the thicker fluids.
I don’t understand the industry’s willingness to thread the needle with this.
I get they want to minimize costs but are these costs, in the whole scheme of things, that crazy? I mean, $10,000 to hose down a plane seems a lot to me but when all added in is it that much?
And more to the point, even if it is a lot to spend, that cost will be passed on to the passengers. The company will be fine.
Why not use the super-goop rather than quibble over whether a degree this way or that is important and risk the whole flight? Surely the loss of just one airframe and the people on it goes a looooong way to paying for super-goop de-icing/anti-icing.
Up-thread I posted a video of the plane crash in Washington D.C. and one of the issues was a de-icing team deciding a four degree difference was worth a change in the de-icing mix. How is that sensible?
My point being why not just cut through the bother and apply a fool-proof de-icer? More expensive? Maybe. But spread across the whole industry and economies of scale versus loss of life and planes? I am thinking it isn’t a bad tradeoff.
Because we operate in New Zealand, Australia, and the Pacific Islands and ice on the ground is rare. In the two years I flew for the company (I’m currently on furlough) I had two mornings where we had frost on the surfaces and had to de-ice the plane, I didn’t experience any days where we had active frost forming and would’ve had to have used a thicker anti-ice fluid. Not only that but the company is pretty much the only game in town so if they want something they mostly have to pay for it themselves, they don’t have dozens of other airlines to share the costs with. I’m 99% certain they use all resources available when flying out of Chicago or somewhere like that, but for us on the short haul fleet it’s not worth it. Worst case, a flight gets delayed until the weather improves, but it is very rare.
I assume it is the airport that provides the de-icing services and not something each airline does on their own.
If you are the airport in Marrakesh you might not have a lot in the way of de-icing equipment. If some weird weather fluke makes is necessary everyone is just grounded. If you are the airport in Anchorage then you probably have lots and lots of de-icing trucks and de-icing goop.
If a plane needs de-icing then they ask the airport for it and they pay for the service.
So, it doesn’t matter where you fly out of. You pay the airport when you need it. And my point is stop fussing around with mixtures that make you crash if you guess the current temperature wrong by four degrees and rather just hose the planes with something substantial enough to keep them ice-free for an hour in most any condition.
It may be more expensive per application but if it saves just one plane in five years I would be willing to bet it is money well spent.
We aren’t flying in Anchorage, or anywhere like that. In Australia people complain when it gets colder than 20ºC/68ºF, in the Pacific Islands I doubt they even know what frost is, and in New Zealand it gets cold but not properly cold. Even Queenstown, the “ski capital” of the country is at a low altitude (around 1200 feet above sea level) and doesn’t see that much in the way of freezing temperatures. Aside from Queenstown, all of the other airports are on the coast where the sea keeps temperatures relatively warm. Having snow settle on the ground is a once in 5 year event for Dunedin, the most miserable of our cities. Additionally it is a small country with one main airline. If we aren’t using Type II fluid then there probably isn’t any in the country.
I’m not sure what you mean by super-goop but deicing fluid removes the ice and anti-ice keeps it off until airborne. Once airborne the plane has systems to take care of itself (if not you don’t fly).
No. Airlines can have their own crews. It’s whatever is the most cost effective or in the case of a hub city whatever meets their fleet needs. Airlines don’t want to wait in line to deice when they have a large group of planes all departing in closely spaced departure slots.
I believe up-thread someone mentioned the anti-ice solution was thick and the thicker it was the longer it lasted (presumably clings to the plane longer).
Well, which airline pays for this?
Many airports (such as Toronto’s Pearson Airport and others in Canada) have de-icing pads. After pushing back, the pilots will taxi over to a specially constructed pad where multiple planes can be de-iced at once. SOURCE
Are you asking which airline specifically does this? I can’t answer that.
Also, it’s not one or the other. There’s nothing stopping an airline from doing both if it’s a really bad icing situation.
As for deicing pads, that would likely involve recovery systems. You can’t just wash thousands of gallons of glycol into a storm sewer. It has to be contained. They may also run the glycol underground like they do fuel so the trucks don’t have to run back and forth to a storage tank. Don’t know.
When you see a fuel truck pull up at a major airport you’re most likely looking at a truck used as a pumping station for fuel pulled from a ramp connection. A deice pad may be the same thing, used as both a source of the fluid and a drain system.
As I said upthread, at many airports we have our own employees in our own trucks doing de-/anti-icing at or near the gate. At other airports we have our employees and trucks doing it near the ends of the runway. At yet other airports one or more 3rd party vendors do it. Either bringing trucks to the various airlines’ gates or all done together at a shared pad.
In any case the run-off has to be captured and recycled.
As to why not be super-duper extra cautious and over-prepare on every flight every time there’s a flake of snow, the answer is simple: money. We typically make about $4 per passenger per domestic flight. De-/anti-icing costs a lot more than that. Nobody makes money on a flight that got de-iced.
The way it’s done is safe enough, when all the procedures are diligently followed. Once procedures aren’t followed, then they’re just as able to be mis-followed while being sensibly cautious as when being silly-level cautious.
Stuff like what happened to Air Florida 40 (!) years ago was a result of inadequate procedures backed up by inadequate science poorly executed. A lot has been learned since about what works and what doesn’t. There’s no doubt there’s more to be learned; micro-scale weather is a complicated subject. It’ll be interesting to see how the next ice-related mishap occurs. My bet is it won’t be due to ground procedures properly followed.
Icing scares the crap out of me. I never bothered getting my private IFR because in Canada almost any time other than the middle of summer, if you are in cloud you are dealing with icing conditions. So for someone who owned a small Grumman with no deicing equipment, IFR flying was almost impossible even though my plane had an IFR capable instrument panel.
I was on a commercial flight once, and we were taking off in bad icing conditions. The plane got a complete deicing on the ramp, but then we wound up in a very slow line for takeoff. While we waited, I could see the frost building on the wings, and I was getting more and more nervous about the daptain deciding to fly anyway.
Once we got to the runup area Insaw why the line was so slow: There was another deicing truck there, and we pulled in and got deiced again.
I’ve read too many accident reports involving loss of controll after just a very thin layer of frost or ice disrupted the boundary layer of the lifting surfaces or causes other problems. It’s not just the weight of the ice that gets you.
Yeah. For takeoff / landing the weight is negligible; it’s the airflow disruption that kills.
Lightplanes in cruise can end up with a weight & drag problem more than a lift problem. But can fall out of the sky later when they try to slow for landing before they’ve encountered conditions that will melt their ice off. With limited speed and limited fuel aboard, there’s no assurance you can find ice-clearing conditions before you’re out of fuel. That’s a game where the only way to win is not to play.
I too never flew a lightplane where icing was even remotely a possibility. Which meant staying VMC all winter in the Midwest and steering clear of certain combos of temp and precip to boot. The couple of times I picked up accumulating rime ice in IMC out West it was time for aggressive action to get away from those conditions. Scary stuff for sure. Good thinking on your part.
In the jet world I’ve not encountered serious airframe icing in flight since about 1995. We get a little quite frequently, but the serious stuff is rare. Every descent in IMC has the engine anti-ice on unless we’re in the tropics or at low altitude. Needing to heat the wings is much more unusual.
I got through this very low-workload winter season without pre-takeoff de-/anti-icing even once. The story I told of the water beaded up on the wing last week was as close as I got. Plenty of folks based in BOS, ORD, NYC, CLE, PHL, etc, not to mention all of Canada, got to de-ice a bunch this year. Just one more irritant of the job.
yah, it never occurred to me to fly in icing conditions but one Winter I got hit with a very fine rain that started to accumulate on the wing strut. Couldn’t get a proper view of the leading edge. I didn’t want to find out what ice does to a laminar flow wing so I got it on the ground pretty quick.
As an aside are pilots generally a conservative bunch?
Pilots are generally short haired white males who are rule followers. So culturally conservative. Historically many voted D because of the importance of labor unions. As the unions have been systematically neutered by legislation since the Reagan years, more and more have switched to voting R.
There are a LOT of Trumpers flying jets. And no, that does not make me happy.
And to think, I nearly bought a Hyundai once…
Recently I’ve been enjoying the YouTube channel 3 Minutes of Aviation - here is the latest, had to share for the awesome P-51 gear-up landing in the second clip. That is some skilled piloting. The 737 landing in the following clip must have been ‘fun’ for the passengers! And there is also a neat video of a helicopter doing a (controlled) backflip (I don’t know the technical term).
He has a lot of interesting clips on his channel, but frequently fails to explain them accurately. Still, it’s entertaining.
Are there any airline cheats for landing in crosswinds? In a small plane I’d just come in high and cut power and let the weight of the plane plow through. Piper made it easier with the mechanical flaps. Hit the runway at stall speed and dump them.
I don’t think you could fly above the standard approach angle because it would cause turbulence for the plane behind your but there might other techniques at your disposal.