Flight attendant prevents ‘potential disaster’ after spotting ice on wings seconds before take-off
A FLIGHT attendant prevented a “potential disaster” after spotting ice on the wings of a plane in the seconds before it took off, a report has revealed.
The unnamed crew member saw the built-up while boarding the craft, and alerted pilots when they made to leave without having the wings deiced.
The revelations were made in a public report by the Confidential Human Factors Incident Reporting Programme (CHIRP).
The programme was set up by the Civil Aviation Authority, the body responsible for overseeing civil aviation in the UK, to allow those working as staff on airlines to anonymously report concerns over safety.
The report recounts an incident in which a member of one plane’s crew noticed “a significant layer of snow” building up on the wings as they closed the doors after passengers had boarded.
They expected to hear the captain announce that the wings would need to be deiced before take-off, as would usually happen in cold weather, but no announcement was made.
The accumulation of ice can be very dangerous because a plane’s wings are designed to have a very specific shape to ensure they can provide lift for flight.
Ice essentially changes the shape of the wings, disrupting the flow over air around them and hindering their ability to create lift.
‘THEY HAD NO INTENTION OF DEICING THE CRAFT’
The attendant said they found it “strange” that the plane wasn’t yet being deiced, but that they still “didn’t say anything because I was still sure that they were going to do it”.
“I was also thinking that, as experienced pilots, they must know what they are doing and it wasn’t my place to tell them how to do their job,” they wrote.
They said they then heard the door of the cockpit being locked and the engines being started during the safety demonstration, and realised the pilots “had no intention of deicing the aircraft”.
They then told the senior member of the cabin crew about the ice as the plane prepared to enter the runway.
“They looked at the wings and agreed with me and called [the pilots],” the attendant wrote.
‘EXTREMELY WORRYING’
Once they had been notified, the pilots moved the plane to a holding area and made an announcement to the cabin before coming back to inspect the wings.
The captain then confirmed that deicing the plane before take-off would be necessary.
The flight was eventually cancelled and the runway closed amid heavy snowfall.
The attendant said they had been called by the captain to thank them, and told that, during pre-flight checks, pilots had seen only snow on the wings.
They said it was “extremely worrying” that nobody “except myself had noticed the severity of the situation which potentially could have ended in disaster”.
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In comments following the report, a CHIRP spokesperson said: “It must never be assumed that someone else has already spotted a potential safety issue – it is better to report something twice than not at all.
“Remember that the most important thing in such incidents is to report your concerns as soon as possible.”
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