Icing Gear

Each anti- or de-icing technology has benefits and drawbacks. If you’re flying with boots, use them early and often.

Friday, October 19, 2012 at 12:00 AM ET

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Key Takeaways:

Aircraft icing is a persistent and severe hazard, with many personal planes still using basic protection systems similar to older designs, despite advancements like TKS and bleed-air.
Ice protection systems are categorized as deicing (removing accumulated ice, such as boots) or anti-icing (preventing ice from forming, like TKS fluid or heated surfaces).
Various systems, including boots, TKS “weeping wing,” electrothermal, bleed-air, and electro-expulsive technologies, each have distinct operational principles, benefits, and significant drawbacks like fluid depletion or high cost.
Ultimately, no aircraft is truly immune to icing, and all de-/anti-icing systems are designed to enable escape from hazardous conditions, not for prolonged flight within them, highlighting the need to understand their limitations.

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Anyone who’s read Ernest K. Gann’s Fate Is The Hunter will recall the author’s experience in an ice-laden DC-2 over the Eastern Seaboard. After departing Nashville for New York, Gann and his captain, Hughen, encounter severe icing and attempt to return to Nashville, only to find it below minimums. They are forced to divert to Cincinnati, barely making it, thunking down the airplane on the runway after an 8+50 odyssey exhausted altitude, fuel and ideas.Their DC-2 was equipped with de-icing boots, alcohol for the props and windshield, and even a heating duct to defrost the cockpit windows. None of it could keep up with the ice accumulation or shed what turned out to be up to four inches of the stuff, providing an early demonstration that there’s no such thing as an airplane immune to icing.