Continited

This morning at IAH temps were hovering right around freezing, and we had had some light drizzle overnight. This led to some ice accumulation on aircraft sitting overnight at IAH... I arrived at IAH for my 7:05 flight to ATL to find that all the earlier ~6AM delta flights to all destinations had started progressive delays because of the ice build up on the aircraft, we were essentially waiting for temps to rise so ice would melt on its own. Since all gates were tied up, planes for the 7AM hour and beyond were still parked remotely until the gates cleared. My first thought was why couldn't they spray the planes down with fluid? Other airlines were spraying theirs down and leaving more or less on time...

Fast forward to 8AM, the earlier 6AM flight to ATL and all the other earlier flights started leaving, and were then deiced! If they could've been deiced earlier, why weren't they? Just a very confusing situation overall, wasn't really ever sure what the real story was and it caused some pretty massive delays and chaos at all the delta gates at IAH... My 7:05 to ATL wound up leaving at 9:00, luckily I had a very padded connection

MSPeconomist

It sounds like DL operates its own de-icing operation at IAH rather than using a common setup shared with other carriers as some airports do. DL would have limited equipment and trained personnel to de-ice planes. Sometimes there are reported shortages of de-icing fluid supplies.

FWAAA

De-icing aircraft is common throughout the winter in the USA, but it's not very common in Houston. Similarly, I doubt Miami or Phoenix or Los Angeles have any substantial de-icing setups.

Continited

Yes the truck was marked with a delta logo now that you mention it. Once planes started leaving it seemed like a non-issue, truck went up and sprayed them and on to the next. Seemed very routine once it all started moving, I guess that's why I'm confused.

MSPeconomist

I remember a weather event at ATL shortly before the merger where DL operations were very badly impacted with twelve hour tarmac delays being reported. At the time, it was claimed that DL owned eight pieces/sets of de-icing equipment (trucks?) at ATL, five of them were functional, but there were only enough trained staff to actually operate three of them.

Maybe the DL IAH de-icing equipment operator's shift started at 8 am today.

Continited

Interesting, didn't think about them possibly needing special crew for those trucks, I guess I figured the ramp guys could all do it just as easily. I'm not upset about the situation in the least, just thought it was interesting to observe how it affected every flight. Definitely not a common occurrence to deice at IAH, especially since im traveling to the NE today and would never have thought that the source of my winter weather delays would be IAH!

kop84

Also how were the roads in IAH? If there was ice on the planes I can imagine some ice on the roads combined with people not used to driving on ice making for a late arrival to work.

Being from Northern MN it makes me laugh a little bit.

Continited

Roads were just fine actually, it never dawned on me at all that there would be any issue with ice until I arrived at the airport and saw everything delayed. Even then, I almost thought they were kidding

EZEDoesIt

Why would you think that DL has it's own deicing operation at a non-hub airport in TX? Why should they make such a financial investment?

MSPeconomist

I'm not sure it's a totally separate crew since that would mean highly seasonal employment, but not all rampers, especially in the south, would have received de-icing training. There are different processes, but it often involves moving a "bucket" close to the aircraft, often when the plane is still parked in a congested gate area. It's obviously important not to damage the aircraft exterior by hitting it with the bucket (high aboe the truck in order to spray and inspect the top of the plane), nozzle, etc. One would also need to know what fluid formula to use in different weather conditions and how to recognize when adequate de-icing has been performed.

MSPeconomist

Because the OP reported above that the de-icing truck had a DL logo.

Sometimes such investments are made in order to give DL more control over their own operations. In other cases, DL can contract out the DL service to other carriers. It depends, but I didn't claim that DL should necessarily do this themselves rather than outsourcing.

RDUKingFisher

I was looking at the flights out of IAH this morning and noticed there were delays. I assumed it was related to the weather in ATL; never occurred to me that it was IAH weather.

LaserSailor

Deicing is done on a strict protocol, you can't deice a 8am departure at 6am for example. Sometimes up here in the tundra we are deiced, taxi out, come back, and deice again. The airfoil is sensitive to shape changes from ice, so it's important to get this right.

PRWeezer

In ATL it's handled by ramp agents and they get annual training for the trucks. But since it's less common at IAH maybe not as many people are trained for it?

Ebes1099

You made that conjecture before the OP said the truck had a DL logo on it?