Originally Posted by 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

Originally Posted by Robbyb03

The issue wasn't weather in Houston, the issue was weather in Atlanta. The Atlanta airport has two deicing areas and each one can only deice thirty aircraft a hour (60 total) so the airlines (mainly Delta as it's their biggest hub) spread out delays TO Atlanta to avoid gridlock for gates and LONG backups for the deicing areas. The airport was advertising only 80 arrivals a hour yesterday. The airport can handle almost twice that many arrivals (132) and 118 departures on a nice day, but reduced the rate because of weather.

Originally Posted by Continited

It was every flight to every destination, not just the ones to ATL. Also, other planes at IAH were deicing, and the announcement made was that we couldn't go because the planes had ice on them. Suggest you reread my post.

Originally Posted by 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.

Originally Posted by Norri

They had an ice problem in PHX around Christmas, the solution was to tow the aircraft out of the shade at the gates into the sun to thaw.
Problem solved.^

Originally Posted by 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?

Originally Posted by 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.

Originally Posted by 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?

Originally Posted by Ebes1099

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

Originally Posted by Robbyb03

I read your post correctly and I'm telling you why the flights to Atlanta were being delayed. I don't know and could care less why the flights to other destinations were delayed, but flights were being delayed to Atlanta to reduce gridlock because only 60 aircraft can deice and depart Atlanta in one hour! So if you reduce the arrival rate, you reduce delays departing Atlanta as you simply can't deice and wait around to depart for hours.