Ryanair in hot water over aircraft de-icing operations
Posted: 14 January 2019 | International Airport Review | 2 comments
Ryanair’s recent de-icing techniques have come under scrutiny as a video has emerged of buckets of hot water being used to de-ice a plane.
Ecole Nationale de l’Aviation Civile (ENAC) has launched an inquiry on de-icing activities at Brindisi Airport in southern Italy, after a video appears to show airside operations staff de-icing an aircraft wing with buckets of hot water.
The video was filmed by Italian politician Mauro D’Attis. The practise has been criticised, but according to guidelines, defrosting a plane with “buckets of hot water at 60ºC [is] allowed when the air temperature is 0ºC”. Tabloid newspaper, The Sun, reported that the airport operators added: “The Captain was aware and satisfied. The procedure was to remove a little residual snow. It was a perfectly safe procedure.”
ENAC issued a statement which said: “In relation to press reports and videos circulated in recent days that report de-icing of the wings of aircraft departing from Brindisi Airport were carried out manually and in an inadequate manner, the National Agency for the Civil Aviation announces that it has initiated inspections on airport operations conducted at the airport in conjunction with the snowfall that affected the area.
“The ENAC technicians will be at Brindisi Airport to verify the management of the emergency derived from adverse weather conditions and the situation that has been determined.”
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A few years ago I was sat on a Ryanair flight at EMA waiting to depart.
Through the window I watched in disbelief as a guy walked up to the wing with a pair of steps!
He climbed up the steps and proceeded to spray the contents of a can of car de-icer into the flaps!
The captain then gave the flaps a quick up and down!
Job done the guy climbed back down and gave a thumbs up to the captain!
I never took my eye off that wing for the entire flight!
We were due to be on this flight after passengers had boarded it for another destination, where they sat for two hours on the runway and then we’re told to disembark and cancelled the flight , then we were told to line up and that we would be flying on it instead and we watched this incident unfold and It really didn’t fill me with much hope.