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 remains a significant and persistent hazard, with even modern systems struggling, demonstrating that no airplane is truly immune, and many personal aircraft have limited protection.
Ice protection systems are broadly categorized into de-icing (removing accumulated ice, e.g., boots) and anti-icing (preventing ice formation, e.g., TKS fluid or bleed-air).
Various technologies exist—including pneumatic boots, fluid-based (TKS), electrothermal, bleed-air, and electro-expulsive systems—each with specific mechanisms, benefits, drawbacks, and applications, but all are designed for escaping, not enduring, icing conditions.

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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.