During the colder months, aircraft de/anti-icing is crucial to ensure a safe take-off. Ice accumulation on an aircraft’s wings can reduce lift by up to 30% and increase drag by 40%, rendering flight highly dangerous if it is not removed.
This process is particularly critical in regions which see some of the longest and most demanding winters on the planet – notably, the Nordics. One ground handler active in the region explains more.
Aviator Airport Alliance provides ground handling services at 15 airports in Scandinavia, including anti and de-icing operations. These range from small regional airports in Norway to larger international airports in Stockholm, Helsinki and Copenhagen.
Anders Søreide, Head of De-/Anti Icing and Corporate Safety Advisor at Aviator, notes that the company’s largest stations at Helsinki and Stockholm Arlanda can carry out up to 150 de-icings at peak times, depending on traffic. Despite being smaller than both of these, its Tromsø station – Aviator’s busiest de-icing station in Norway – performs de-/anti-icing on more than 90% of all departures on peak days.
While temperatures are now gradually rising across central and southern Europe, the de-icing season in the Nordics can extend well into the summer months in certain areas.
“Most of our operations are winter-oriented in some way or another,” says Søreide. “Our southernmost stations in Copenhagen usually start their de/anti-icing operations in mid-November and can last until April, while our stations in northern Norway (Tromsø and Bardufoss) have a de-icing season that typically lasts from September until June.
“They basically only have a couple of months in which they don’t think about de/anti-icing,” he adds. “They usually use the summer months for training, in preparation for the next season.”
Though long de-icing seasons are the norm in Scandinavia, weather conditions have become comparatively less easy to predict in recent years.
“In the southern part of Norway, this year was initially quite calm […] we have experienced mostly very cold weather, but little precipitation,” says Søreide. “That has been the case at Arlanda and Copenhagen as well.
“It has been cold and dry, which typically does not necessitate de/anti-icing on the aircraft. However, in Helsinki, Stockholm and Copenhagen, they have actually had an all-time high with snow in January, which is very unusual.
“South Western Norway has had a low season – however, Kristiandsand, our southernmost Norwegian station, had a record season, which is also abnormal.
“Last season was similar in the fact that it was abnormal; there was a reduction in the number of de-icing operations, contrary to the season before.”
As de-icing operations continue to be impacted by changing climates, does Søreide believe that this unpredictability will persist? “We see the change quite clearly,” he affirms. “None of the last five seasons have been alike.
“When I started out in 2006, winter was usually winter, whether it was in Finland, Sweden or southern and northern Norway. It was a little bit more stable; you could usually prepare for having snow in the different months.
“That has become much harder to predict. What we’re saying now is we have to prepare for the variability, and not necessarily the predictable winters.”
Around 200 staff are involved in anti- and de-icing operations across Aviator’s stations, operating a mixed fleet of vehicles including Vestergaard Elephant BETA and MY models alongside Textron Safeaero units.
The fleet varies slightly from season to season, but it is currently comprised of 48 de-icers (28 BETA, 16 MY and 4 Safeaero). At its largest station in Helsinki, Aviator deploys nine Vestergaard Elephant BETAs, while many other locations require only a single vehicle.
Electrification of de/anti-icing GSE
Søreide highlights that Aviator is always monitoring developments in de-icing ground support equipment (GSE). The company is especially committed to advancing electrification, both for its environmental benefits and its potential to reduce operating costs. However, this transition comes with challenges.
“Whenever we are starting a procurement phase for new GSE, electrification is always a focus area,” he says. “We also see that there are many hybrid solutions being made available.
“One of the issues, at least at the bigger stations, is that we are quite reliant on the airport infrastructure. [Airports] need to provide the charging facilities, which can be an issue in de/anti-icing, because when the weather starts getting snowy, we have to be prepared right away.
“It’s quite an intensive operation once it gets started, especially in Helsinki and Stockholm, where the volumes are very high and you don’t necessarily have the time to charge the vehicles for hours, because you need them right now.
“The de-icing operations at most airports are critical for the logistics of the whole airport, so if we don’t have the vehicles available, then the whole airport operation comes to a halt.”
Despite these infrastructure hurdles, Aviator affirms that it is dedicated to electrifying its general GSE fleet. “De/anti-icing is a different kind of operation than standard ramp work,” says Søreide. “We operate at separate de/anti-icing platforms in most countries, which are part of the airport infrastructure and are usually located away from the main area of operations at the gate. For electrification to be successful there, it requires different infrastructure.”
“[But] the technology is getting better and better, and airport operators are also keen on us getting electrical equipment […] We require quite large [de-icing] trucks which have good capacity, and we haven’t seen fully electric vehicles in that size yet – they are starting to come.
“In the general GSE fleet, we are, for the most part, fully electric. We have electric pushbacks, baggage tractors, conveyor belts and high-loaders.”
Moreover, Søreide emphasises that keeping both equipment and workers safe in harsh conditions is of the utmost importance. Aviator’s fleet of Vestergaard BETAs include heated closed cabins, allowing operators to carry out de-icing in sub-zero temperatures. At smaller stations, where Vestergaard vehicles have open baskets, the company requires staff to use safety equipment such as fall protection and glasses.
“There is, of course, specialised training to be a de/anti-icing operator,” says Søreide. “The temperature of the water they are spraying can be up to 80 degrees. So, if that is not treated with sufficient respect, they can get burned.”
Along with all service providers in Scandinavia, Aviator uses monopropylene glycol, a non-toxic chemical, for its de-icing operations. There are two variations of glycol: Type 1 fluid, which is used for both de-icing and anti-icing, and Type 2 fluid, which provides a longer-lasting protective layer for anti-icing.
Minimising the environmental impact of glycol
Recently, the company’s fluid supplier phased out its old Type 1 fluid; the new product has a higher concentration of glycol in the undiluted solution, allowing de-/anti-icing teams to use more hot water and therefore minimise environmental impact.
“De-/anti icing fluid is not deemed to be poisonous, but at some airports it goes into the groundwater drainage systems,” says Søreide. “For the fluid to break down in water, it uses a lot of oxygen, so it’s not necessarily ideal if you release it into small bodies of water.
“On our part, this is something that we are aware of, and we are always optimising our consumption and usage towards the minimum needed. But it is also an infrastructure issue. We do a flight safety-critical job – we can’t use any less fluid than what we need to remove snow and ice and provide protective layers.
“The airports need to have proper infrastructure in place to collect residual fluids in most cases,” he emphasises. “Some do, but some don’t. On our part, using the newer fluid which enables a thinner mixture is definitely a step in the right direction.
“Many do not have any collection facilities at all – this applies to most of our stations. Helsinki and Bergen have airport infrastructure to handle residual fluids, and Swedish airports perform manual collection with vacuum trucks. At our Arlanda station, we operate a fleet of vacuum trucks collecting residual fluids from the gate areas.”
In a stark reminder of how crucial sufficient stocks of de-icing substances are for airport operations, thousands of flights were cancelled when KLM ran out of de-icing fluid at Amsterdam Schiphol in January.
“That also affected us in Scandinavia, because many of us in northern Europe use the same fluid provider,” says Søreide. “We had to perform the transition [to the new Type 1 fluid] earlier than planned.
“It varies a little bit from airport to airport. At some airports, we are responsible for the fluid logistics ourselves. At our bigger airports, this is more of a collaboration with the airport authority, because if we run out, the airport comes to a halt.
“Fluid logistics is a focus area where everybody has to take some sort of responsibility. De-icing fluid is critical for flight safety, and not only that – it is also critical for airport logistics.”
