When he was in grad school at MIT, Alex Bratianu-Badea got stuck on a plane at Boston Logan Airport that had to be de-iced, delaying the flight. As he watched how the process worked, he wondered if there was a better way to do it. “They just basically spray hot chemicals onto the aircraft,” he says. “It was a little mind-boggling.”
The current system is slow—a plane either has to wait for a de-icing truck to pull up or it has to taxi to another part of the airport and sometimes sit in line, while passengers wait onboard. It’s expensive for airlines, costing thousands of dollars each time it happens. Making the fossil-fuel-based chemicals also has a large carbon footprint. Some of the millions of gallons of deicing fluid used at airports each year also run off the tarmac and can pollute waterways.
Bratianu-Badea started exploring an alternative with a fellow MIT student, Ruben Toubiana, and they eventually launched a startup called De-Ice to develop a new product that avoids chemicals completely. This winter, it will be tested on a fully operational plane for the first time. Instead of spraying the plane with chemicals, when a pilot pushes a button, a current runs through thin strips of tape that are attached to the outside of the plane. The system heats up the surface of the airplane in a way that’s similar to how an induction stove heats up a pot.
The whole process can happen while passengers board, so the plane is free of ice once it’s ready to take off. “By the time the aircraft pulls back, you’re good to go, and you essentially take off during a winter storm the same way you would on a hot summer day,” Bratianu-Badea says.
Air Canada will be installing the system on an Airbus A320-series aircraft for the first time this winter. The airline has been working with the startup for several years—and had been looking for a solution like this for even longer. “Many technologies have been proposed, but none of them were feasible from a technology, operational, and regulatory point of view,” says Jason Brown, who leads winter operations at Air Canada. “You need all three. When I met Alex and his team in 2018, it actually clicked that their approach and technology were viable.”
The product is simultaneously going through regulatory testing. From the beginning, Bratianu-Badea and Toubiana met with regulatory experts to understand what would be needed to safely add something like this to aircraft. (They also met with pilots about how they’d want to use the system, mechanical teams that would have to perform installation, and manufacturers, in order to reverse engineer a system that would work well for everyone.) The design is as minimal as possible, and can be added to a plane during routine maintenance. It could be approved for commercial use by next winter.
While Brown couldn’t share specific estimates of the cost savings for airlines, it will be significant. “Air Canada alone has about 45,000 de-icing events per year,” he says. “As a pilot, I’ve been there. If you’re doing four legs, like Toronto to Washington D.C. and back, and you’re de-icing four times, it makes for a very long day.” Multiple other airlines are also in discussion with De-Ice about using the product.
For passengers, it could make flying in the winter a little less painful. And it could help shrink one small part of aviation’s giant carbon footprint.
Ever had to wait on the tarmac for your plane to de-ice? This startup has a quicker solution
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05.12.2023
When he was in grad school at MIT, Alex Bratianu-Badea got stuck on a plane at Boston Logan Airport that had to be de-iced, delaying the flight. As he watched how the process worked, he wondered if there was a better way to do it. “They just basically spray hot chemicals onto the aircraft,” he says. “It was a little mind-boggling.”
The current system is slow—a plane either has to wait for a de-icing truck to pull up or it has to taxi to another part of the airport and sometimes sit in line, while passengers wait onboard. It’s expensive for airlines, costing thousands of dollars each time it happens. Making the fossil-fuel-based chemicals also has a large carbon footprint. Some of the millions of gallons of deicing fluid used at airports each year also run off the tarmac and can pollute waterways.
Bratianu-Badea started exploring an........
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