Cockpit Chronicles: Airline de-icing

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

2-23-2011 @ 11:47AM

David T said...

Great article! I was curious on the environmental impacts of deicing fluid. Is it toxic? How do airports handle excess fluid and that which comes off the aircraft? Thanks.

2-23-2011 @ 11:59AM

Thanks David,

I was going to touch on that but ended up leaving it out, since it seems no de-ice fluid is perfect yet. The previous fluids were very toxic.

The new fluids claim to be non-toxic, but they do absorb oxygen in the water as they break down, creating 'dead zones' around airports that allow their runoff.

I can't help think that there just HAS to be a better way.

2-25-2011 @ 12:12PM

conor said...

After we deiced aircraft is departed from the gate a vacuum truck sucks up the glycol on the ground, Also when the aircraft is deiced on the deiceing area or pad there are drains in the area and they drain directly to a catch resivoir where after the winter the glycol is pumped out and recycled.

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