American Airlines Flight 921 should have left O’Hare International Airport for warm, sunny Miami at 6:20 a.m. Jan. 2.
Sixteen hours, nine de-icings and a new crew later, Flight 921 lifted off Runway 32 Left allowing the exhausted, but cheering, passengers a chance to escape the worst snowstorm to hit Chicago in decades.
The Airbus 320 widebody was the last American jet to take off that Saturday night. It was one of only a handful of planes that managed to leave O’Hare for the next 36 hours.
Getting the plane airborne required a gargantuan effort costing an estimated $65,000 in de-icing fluid and dozens of ground-crew members to keep the snow cleared from the plane and gate area.
For American, United Airlines and the dozens of other airlines using O’Hare, one of the world’s busiest airports, that Saturday started a run in which de-icing trucks with their cantilevered booms were in action on 16 of 18 days.
This winter has been so severe that most of the nation’s airlines have wiped out their 1999 budgets for propylene glycol or ethylene glycol, the de-icing fluids approved by the Federal Aviation Administration. Millions of dollars have been spent to combat the snow, ice and frost that can build up on an airplane that’s sitting on the ground.
In a 1992 study, 11.5 million gallons of de-icing fluid was used across the country, when fewer planes and people were flying.
No expense has been spared for de-icing aircraft since January 1982, when an Air Florida plane took off in a snowstorm from Washington National Airport and crashed minutes later in the Potomac River killing 78 on board due to an ice buildup on the plane’s wings and tail assemblies.
For Joseph Lenahan, managing director of ramp services for American, and Brock Crocker, Lenahan’s counterpart at United, it has meant endless hours supervising de-icing crews.
“This has been the toughest de-icing year that I’ve seen yet,” said Lenahan.
But it has been a mixed blessing for the ground crews that service the planes.
January was the 14th consecutive month of above-normal temperatures for the Chicago area. That has allowed ground crews to operate more easily without being bundled up against the weather.
But it also has produced more snow, ice, freezing rain, frost and bone-numbing wind chill than Lenahan or Crocker can remember in more than 15 years.
“We’re not supposed to have freezing rain at 11 degrees,” said Lenahan. But that’s what occurred one week after the Great Snow of 1999.
Both would prefer the bitterly cold temperatures normal for Chicago in January despite the crews being unable to remain outdoors for long periods of time. After all, frost and snow doesn’t usually form below zero.
But they do have to be removed before an airplane rumbles down one of O’Hare’s seven runways.
American, which has more than 550 departures daily, deploys 40 to 50 employees and 51 trucks equipped with booms and nozzles in a “de-icing event,” which may last until the first bank of flights depart or all day long.
United, which has about 750 departures each day, deploys 85 to 95 employees and 46 trucks, about half of which are a new model from Denmark that uses half the glycol as older trucks but does twice the work.
The propylene glycol is stored in tanks mounted on the de-icing trucks and is pumped up to the cherry-pickers where operators direct the spray over the planes.
Smaller operators at O’Hare, including carriers as large as Delta Air Lines, hire contractors to handle their deicing work.
Some airlines in other parts of the country use ethylene glycol. Compared to propylene glycol, which is sometimes used as a food additive, ethylene glycol is cheaper but toxic.
Two types of propylene glycol de-icing fluid are used at O’Hare.
Pinkish-colored Type I fluid, which is 40 percent propylene glycol, is heated to 180 degrees to melt the snow/ice/frost from a plane. About 300 gallons is typically used to clear the control surfaces on the wings and tail of a Boeing 737 or MD-80 aircraft. It costs about $2.50 a gallon.
Generally, the fuselage is not de-iced unless the buildup is severe as was the case Jan. 2.
As many as four de-icing trucks will be deployed around a plane to quickly melt the snow and apply the other solution, Type IV, which prevents snow and ice from reforming before a plane is allowed to depart.
Greenish-colored Type IV is 100 percent propylene glycol. Typically about 100 gallons of it, at about $4.50 a gallon, are used to coat a plane. Depending upon the conditions, the de-icing effects of one application of Type IV glycol are good for an hour or more.
But nothing was typical about Jan. 2. Because of the heavy, blowing snow, the Type IV application was good for only 15 or 20 minutes.
If a plane couldn’t take off within that time, FAA regulations required the plane to return to the terminal for another dousing.
“The problem is the taxi times are extended in that kind of weather,” said Crocker. “And sometimes the airport’s ground equipment gets in the way.
“When that happens, you have to retry,” he said, noting that United’s worst case that day was five de-icings over two hours before a Boeing 747 was able to depart.
Now the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which in 1992 required airports to obtain permits for de-icing, is pushing a plan to allow airlines to use hot water or some other type of de-icing procedure in place of the petroleum-based glycol because of the environmental impact.
Millions of gallons of de-icing fluids have poured into the sewer systems at the nation’s airports this year.
At O’Hare, the propylene glycol runoff is collected in Lake O’Hare, a retention pond between Runway 22 Left and Runway 27 Left, where it is broken down by microbes.
Tests are being conducted using hot air and infrared lights, said Mike Cook, director of the EPA’s wastewater management program.
But United and its pilots oppose the plan to substitute hot water, said airline spokesman Joe Hopkins.
“We’re not convinced it can be done without reducing safety margins,” said Hopkins.
Lenahan said his concerns about the use of hot water are practical. “It will begin freezing as soon as its applied,” he said, noting that Type IV solution cannot be applied over snow or ice.
Flight 921 probably would never have left for Florida Jan. 2 if Lenahan and American would have had to use hot water to de-ice the plane.
Even that effort, however, was well-beyond normal for American.
“At that point,” said Lenahan, “all we wanted to do was get that plane out of here.”
