With winter on the horizon, Salt Lake City International Airport has enlisted the help of a deicing company to combat recent snowstorms across northern Utah.
Handling all private and military aircrafts that fly in and out of the SLC airport aside from Delta Air Lines, which has its own deicing service, Integrated Deicing Services has been working to help prepare planes for winter conditions.
Randy Hubbell, General Manager of Integrated Deicing Services says that deicing is one of the key components of aviation and without it being done, aircrafts wouldn’t be able to fly. Hubbell has been working in aviation for over forty years, working out of the SLC airport for about eight of them.
Hubbell says that the deicing company uses two different types of fluid: Type 1 deice fluid and a Type 4 anti-ice fluid. Type 1 is used to remove the contaminants off an aircraft whereas Type 4 is used if it’s actively precipitating. Air spray is also used whenever there is a blanket of snow on an aircraft.
The deicing process doesn’t take long as Hubbell says, particularly on frost days, it takes an extra 10 to 15 minutes before an aircraft can take off.
Hubbell says that the company sprays as early as September with their real crunch time being mid-December to about President’s Day weekend. He also mentioned that the company has had to deice aircrafts in the summer months this past year.
The main goal of Integrated Deicing Services is to keep pilots and passengers safe and Kenyon Jones, a lead deicer with the company, says that without the deicing process, none of those parties would feel safe flying.
