In-flight De-icer

Reported January 2008

DENVER, Colo. (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Of all the dangers weather can pose to an aircraft, ice is often considered the worst. For three decades, the National Transportation Safety Board has repeatedly called icing a threat to air safety. Now there's a new technology that could save travel time, money, and lives.

Even with the most up-to-date weather information, commuter and small aircraft pilots are vulnerable to ice build-up on the wings.

“The best thing is to avoid it,” pilot Al Yecny told Ivanhoe.

This plane lost an engine due to ice build-up. Small aircraft are more prone to icing because they fly at lower altitudes and lack the mechanisms of larger jets that prevent icing. The NTSB blames over eight hundred deaths in the past three decades on ice. But atmospheric scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado have developed an experimental ice-forecasting tool.

“Experimental means you can use it, you can look at it, but you probably should not be making decisions, critical decisions, based on that information. The FAA has not approved it for that,“ NCAR Project Scientist, Marcia Politovich, told Ivanhoe.

Inside the cockpit, the system details where ice might form. Information is updated hourly and forecasted six hours out.

“It decreases the drag. It decreases the lift. Generally you just want to stay out of it because Mother Nature can surprise you in a nasty ways,” Politovich said.

Ice not only causes crashes, but each year millions of lost dollars due to unnecessary cancellations and delayed flights … if only the pilot had changed to a safer route.

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