Airplane de-icing season begins for WestJet
Posted Oct 31, 2011 04:55:00 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
It may not be winter yet, but the airlines are getting ready for winter weather, with de-icing season getting started.
For WestJet, today marks the annual official start of the de-icing season and it runs until April 30th.
WestJet Station Manager, Rui Pinto told 570 News that’s regardless of if the airport experiences de-icing events or not, “our agents have to be certified or re-certified every year,” , “and the fluids that we use (for de-icing) also have to be certified as per Transport Canada requirements.”
Pinto spoke of a number of different fluids used in the process, “there are various fluids out there, some are glycol based, others propylene. We use the more environmentally friendly stuff, which is glycol.” WestJet uses two types of de-ice fluid, “Type-1, which is orange colour and we use an anti-ice fluid, Type-4,to be applied if required after the Type-1. Type 4, Pinto says, is “green in colour.”
Any time there is any sort of precipitation that will change the normal flight characteristics of an airplane, it calls for an ice event, and there can be different types, “an airplane can actually fly in and it might be a beautiful day here at our airport, but flying along the way they might go through some cloud or some precipitation and they might accumulate a little bit of ice on the wings.” Even if it’s a nice day here, that ice must be removed from the airplane before taking off for the next flight. The other kind of icing event is happens on the ground, “any time you have any sort of precipitation at or below 0 degrees Celsius.”
Ice on the wings can be detrimental to the safety of the airplane and by extension the passengers inside. That’s why it is so important to clear it off. Pinto says “we referrer to it at the ‘clean wing concept’, any sort of contamination on the wing changes the flight characteristics of the airfoil itself, I believe it’s up to 3 mm of ice accumulation on the wing will decrease the lift factor by about 30%.”
Pinto said WestJet is ready and prepared for another “wonderful” de-ice season, “it’s always a challenging time of the year for us, but we have what we call ‘safely performing on time’,” Pinto said it’s at WestJet’s “core-values,” of operating on time as much as possible, “but safety is the primary concern for us and we do everything possible to make sure that when we take to the skies we’re safe.”
