Doug Cameron: Does every airport in the U. S. actually have de icing equipment, even in the south? Have you ever been caught short?
Noam Alon: There's always a deicing system. It may require waiting for the sun to warm up the airplane.

Daniel: Welcome to the KnowEntry Podcast, presented by No Delay.

Doug Cameron: Hi and welcome to the KnowEntry Podcast, where we take you behind the cockpit door to provide Some knowledge that might make your travel experience just a little bit smoother. Joined by Noel Malone and Geoff Murray, both experienced pilots, and Doug Cameron, long time aviation journalist, always willing to learn.
So, it's cold outside. the icing. How necessary is it? We've seen it happen at the gate. We've seen these big machines come. It's like you're going through a giant car wash. Lead us through the mechanics and where does it happen?

Noam Alon: Thanks, Doug. This time of year, I mean, the most important thing is the airplane like we've talked about in previous podcasts.
The airplane has to be clean of any kind of frozen precipitation, snow, ice, things like that, frost. So, it really happens in one of two places, either at the gate, either before departure or immediately after you push back, or it happens at a remote site, and that's a function largely of airport rules, maybe the capacity of the number of trucks, things like that.
But as far as the gate, that's typically the place where, if it's a relatively standard situation, not a lot of accumulated snow, That's the most efficient way because a lot of it, the prep can be done before passengers even arrive with the first application of what we call type one fluid. That's the removal component.
And then type IV is applied typically right after you push back because there is a time limitation on how long that fluid will last. So you want that to be efficient. So if you expect largely that from that point you're going to taxi the runway and get airborne. At the gate is typically where it happens, but sometimes it happens at a remote pad.

So, Geoff, I know you've experienced that recently.

Geoff Murray: Yeah, so, I mean, like Noam talked about, I mean, typically, even as flight crews, pilots, we like to see it done at the gate. Passengers do too, because typically you're going to, you'll get done de icing. You can sequence with the folks, tower and ground control and get out for a takeoff.
But if it's a more impactful weather event, heavy snow, ice, winds, think of, almost blizzard type conditions, what will typically happen is the airport. In conjunction with the airlines will say we're going to use the de icing pad and it's a big area looks like in the summer months just goes to a big area of open taxiway, but in fact, there's a whole science that goes into where you're going to park and when you know they're going to start the application like Noam said of the type one and type IV feel of fluid but it's a it's a centralized location and what that means is you're going to leave the gate you're going to start the motors and the the wings in the airplane may still have snow on them.
And you're going to taxi over to, at O'Hare, it's called the CDF, the Central De Icing Facility. It's on the west side of the airport, so you got to spend 20 or 25 minutes taxiing over there. You got to get yourself positioned into one of the one of the spots where they're going to want you to de ice, you're going to talk to all these specialized de ice guys on the radio who are going to sequence you there. Then you're going to have to go through the process of shutting down the motors and all that stuff. And then what's going to happen, what's next? You shut down the motors. What's next?

Doug Cameron: Can I just ask, would you tell the passengers that in fact we're not off to the runway, we're off to the, we're off to the de icing pad.

Geoff Murray: Absolutely, because at some airports, and I won't mention any specifically, that de ice pad can be further from your departure runway than the gate. So, not only do you need to tell all the folks that, hey, we're going to de ice, but it's like, hey, we're going to de ice in the next literally like in the next county.
And then we're going to have to come back to our county to take off. So it's a, when you're going to the de icing pad almost anywhere except maybe Anchorage and a couple other airports that are just machines with this stuff, it takes a lot of time.

Noam Alon: A lot. So if you're in the back of the airplane and you hear the pilot say, we're going to the centralized de icing facility, it's going to take longer than if you had just been Deiced at the gate, but that may not be an option.
Like Geoff said, it's usually a function of conditions. Could be some other things, but usually a function of conditions that they just simply can't handle at the gate, right?

Geoff Murray: I mean, Noam and I fly with different pilots all the time. And I remember flying with one captain and we're all like when we're leaving our house or leaving our hotel and getting ready, to go out and fly, we're looking at certain apps to see whether we're going to deiced at the gate or whether they're using the.
Deicing facility and all that stuff. And one guy that I flew with, I mean, he, he, he would literally beg, borrow, and steal. He would talk to everybody who could, Hey, any chance we get de iced at the gate? Hey, any chance we can, can avoid the de icing pad because it just adds so much time.
And it also, it also makes it more complex for an Oman I. There's more procedures we need to do. We need to get the aircraft configured differently, but it's just. Really time consuming.
Doug Cameron: So, Noam, you have to turn off the engines before you can get de ice, either, either at the pad or at the gate?

Noam Alon: No, that's a function of procedure. For the most part, if it's at the gate, it's with the engines off. But at the remote pad, it's usually with the engines on. Got it. Okay.

Doug Cameron: I can see why it makes sense to do it at the gate just because of proximity, but doesn't it make just a big old mess, which might be easier to clear up on a pad, which, might have knock on effects on other planes.
So how do they kind of manage the mess, if you know what I mean? Noam, you've spent a lot of time in airline operations. Is that something you have to have to

Noam Alon: think about? Absolutely. In fact, that's the thing that a lot of times beyond the weather conditions, one of the reasons that you'll have a remote pad is for collecting all that de icing fluid which is a lot easier to do in a centralized place than at a gate that isn't necessarily designed so they'll, they actually have machines that will sweep it up or drains that will specifically capture it because, I mean, these chemicals are not great for other than de icing. I don't know how healthy they are for, so anyway, so that's usually one of the reasons you'll have a de icing pad is so that you can capture that, those chemicals and, and avoid them getting into other, other systems.

Geoff Murray: And the other, the other reason is you've got the de icing equipment really in one facility. So, imagine Noam and I are talking as pilots, but as a guy who's doing the de icing. You've got to move the truck around, you've got people moving around the ramp, you've got marshallers all over the place.
Like if you're one of the guys driving the truck or doing the de icing, I am sure the last thing you want to be doing is doing the de icing at the gate. When you're out at the, at the de icing facility, we are out the de icing pad, you're literally, you're sitting in your truck, here comes an airplane. I spray this, I spray that.
I get on the radio, boom, that airplane goes and there's another one. So it, it is. I'm, I'm probably being a little too dramatic in how much time it takes. I am sure if you talk to the airport authorities, they'd be like, time to de-ice in a pad is a lot shorter than at the gate. 'cause we don't have to move the equipment around.
The guys don't have to get repositioned. Everything's really efficient.

Noam Alon: And to add to that, I would say at a pad, you're usually sprayed by two trucks, so each truck is doing one side of the aircraft, where at the gate, you have one, and as Geoff said, they're trying to navigate all the other ground equipment, and then get around to the other side of the airplane, much more, much tighter quarters, so, um.
Yeah, I think the pad is definitely much more efficient. It is not easy for those

Geoff Murray: folks. I mean, I was de icing once at an outstation. We were in Allentown, Pennsylvania getting de iced. So, a couple aircraft coming in and out of there every day. You've got one truck, that truck only de ices three or four and see the truck hit us.
I mean, it, it, it hit the aircraft, took us completely out of service. And the plane, the plane was gummed up for days.

Doug Cameron: Does every airport in the U. S. actually have de icing equipment, even in the south? Have you ever been caught short because they either haven't had enough or haven't had any?

Noam Alon: There's always a de icing system. It may require waiting for the sun to warm up the airplane. Correct, correct.

Geoff Murray: And I mean, I mean, it's a good question. I mean, it's kind of a funny question. Because there are airports in the south when there was the polar vortex, and I can't remember if it was two or three years ago, I'm thinking that like, maybe it was Tallahassee, Florida and that kind of thing that got impacted with just light snow, but it was enough snow and frost to contaminate the wing of the aircraft and they're like, What are we going to do?
We don't have

Doug Cameron: DIG. We brought it in Houston for two years. It snowed once in the two years and I think it was the first time in ten years it had snowed. Right. That's certainly had an impact. Bush is not O'Hare in terms of its spread. Right. Right. What else can go wrong in terms of, from a pilot's perspective, in terms of the availability of deicing equipment Geoff, I don't know if you've, apart from your car crash or plane bumping incident, what else?

Geoff Murray: I mean, it's the beginning, we're in the beginning of the deicing season now, we're just going into the holiday season and all that. And it was a week and a half ago, I was at an outstation, I won't mention where, they were getting It's psyched up. They're like, we're ready to de ice and all that stuff.
We were the number three or number four aircraft to get de iced. They came up, started de icing us. And you can hear the fluid hitting the top of the aircraft. You can look out the window, seeing them spray on the wings and that kind of thing. And all of a sudden it stops. We're like, what happened?
We're getting on the radio and we're like, hey, flight one, two, three, you guys. And they're like, the sheepish guy that's on the radio is like, well, we, we ran out of fluid. We got, we got to go back to the depot to fill up the truck.

Doug Cameron: Fill

Geoff Murray: up the truck. It's snowing. It was only type one fluid. And lo and behold, we need to go through the whole process, the type one again, ended up to type IV and all that stuff. But that was more emblematic. I would say, it's the beginning of the travel season, the beginning of the winter, winter travel season. Was your flight on time? We were not on time, but. We did attempt, we went really fast on the way back, I think, truthfully, I think we actually left 45 minutes or 50 minutes late, and we got to the gate. We were coming to O'Hare, we got to the gate at O'Hare maybe 5 or 6 minutes late.

Noam Alon: I'll tell you this, just from some of my experience working in other jobs in the airline at the larger hubs in particular, they're in the off season, like around the summertime. There's all this pre planning, all this tabletop exercises to prevent exactly what Geoff just described from happening.
It's like, how do we, what did we learn from last season about where to stage the trucks and how much fluid do we need and what are the long term forecasts and all these. variables, there's so much planning that goes into this so that while there likely will be a delay, how do we minimize it?
How do we make sure that from our passenger's perspective, we're doing this as quickly and as efficiently as possible?

Doug Cameron: But you can still get hit by curveballs. A few years ago, I remember there was like a national shortage of particular types of fluid. Correct, correct. You guys get everybody in a, in a milk particular.

Geoff Murray: Yeah. And this fluid isn't. It's not like you can just go fill up a truck with the de icing fluid you're getting down at your auto parts supply store. I mean, this is like heavily engineered really remarkable Fluid and a truck needs to carry two types of it. It's got the type one which is to clear the aircraft It's the type IV which is to keep the aircraft clear after it's already been cleared.
So it's a really Big deal. And in, and in terms of the desktop exercises, the preparation, I mean, there is a, I think they actually call it like the Super Bowl of de icing. And there's, there's a group of, of airline folks who keep track of, Hey, there was a big snow event in Denver and Seattle, and they will, will award the airport that did the best.
Like folks who do this, take it really, really seriously. It's a, it's a big

Doug Cameron: deal. Does it not drip off the wing? How does it clean itself? How does the plane clean itself? It's actually a

Noam Alon: remarkable, property, remarkable properties of chemistry. So it's actually very thick, very sticky, almost like molasses.
And when it's applied to the wing, it stays on so that it can, any precipitation that's falling, the snow or ice, is captured by the fluid. But you don't want Gallons and gallons of this liquid on your wing as you're taking off. So as you roll down the runway, what you'll notice roughly around, let's call it about halfway down the takeoff roll, but it happens at about 100 knots, but as a pastor you might not know that speed. But about halfway down the runway, if you're looking out the window, you'll see it sheer off. And it basically becomes like water and runs off the wing carrying any accumulated snow that it's captured and leaving the wing clean. And without all that extra weight so you can take off and the airplane can meet its performance requirements for takeoff.

Geoff Murray: It's actually pretty remarkable. Yeah, it's remarkable stuff. I mean, it's remarkable. But it is slippery as heck on the ramp. I mean, even from a safety perspective, I think of, well, I mean, Noam, you, you ran an operations control center at one point. I'm sure the airports don't like the fact that they de ice.
at the gate because that fluid is so slippery. You've got folks loading bags, doing the fueling and all that stuff. I am sure it is a big time safety hazard.

Noam Alon: Yeah, oh yeah. Lots of

Doug Cameron: injuries

Noam Alon: in

Doug Cameron: the

Noam Alon: winter.

Doug Cameron: Okay, but for the passenger's safety. So, Noam, Geoff, thanks very much. We've covered a lot of ground here.
De icing is absolutely necessary for safety, but it can also be both very time consuming and have a pretty big impact on your, your journey time. So. Hopefully everyone's learned a little bit here about the process and at least how not to be frustrated about it. So thanks for listening to the KnowEntry podcast and again if you want to learn a little bit more about the travel process then you can look at No Delay which can offer exclusive information about ways to reduce your travel time by being aware of potential delays.
So, thanks again, and we'll see you next time.

Daniel: Thanks for joining the KnowEntry podcast. For more information, visit Knnodelay.com.