ATL Spends $40 Million On Six Deicing Pads

Dec. 17, 2012
News pads, however, won't be completed until next winter so officials hope for a mild winter

In a move to reduce the risk of massive flight cancellations during snowstorms, officials at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport are spending roughly $40 million on six additional deicing pads.

They hope to prevent the scenario that unfolded during the snowstorm of January 2011 when travelers got stuck on the tarmac waiting for their planes to be deiced and hundreds of flights were canceled.

After that, "we got with everybody and said, 'How can we develop and put together a north deicing complex?'" Hartsfield-Jackson General Manager Louis Miller said.

But the new deicing pads won't be completed until next winter, and airport officials hope this year for mild weather to tide them over for another year. Last year, "we were lucky," Miller said.

Hartsfield-Jackson currently has 11 deicing pads near Concourse E in the middle of the airfield. Each pad can deice an average of two planes per hour, so adding six on the north side of the airport will increase the airport's deicing capabilities by 12 aircraft per hour.

"I think it'll minimize the deicing waits," Miller said. "I can't say it'll eliminate them."

Airlines thin out flight schedules by canceling flights in advance of storms, helping prevent travelers and planes from getting stuck at an airport. "The less thinning you can do, the better, and a lot of those decisions are based on the deicing capacity," Delta Air Lines spokesman Morgan Durrant said.

The cost for the six additional pads, drainage systems and storage tanks for the deicing fluid is estimated at $36 million to $40 million, Miller said.

The debate over such expenditures often circles around how much to invest in equipment for snowstorms that may occur only once in a number of years.

"You do it as an insurance policy," said Bill Fife, a New York-based airport consultant.

Miller said the deicing pads can double as aircraft parking areas during mild weather, which could have been useful when Hurricane Sandy hit the Northeast, leading Atlanta-based Delta to cancel thousands of flights. Hartsfield-Jackson had to close taxiways to provide parking space for idled planes in Atlanta.

The airport also plans to upgrade its deicing pump system to address what it acknowledges is an "inferior system" that led to failures and malfunctions that caused backups of aircraft on the ramp while repairs were made, according to an airport document.

The current system is a temporary one. It was installed in 2002 to comply with a consent order reached with the state Environmental Protection Division after a glycol spill into the Flint River, the source of drinking water for Fayette County. Upgrading the system will improve reliability and reduce environmental risk, airport officials say.

Copyright 2012 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution