FUN FACT!!
As someone who has worked at an airport, I’ll put my perspective in. Pads are a fair bit more organized and useful. I understand the WANT for de-icing at the gate, but a fair bit of airports are steering away from this for multiple reasons.
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The De-Icing fluid can be dangerous.
----- What does this mean? Multiple things. The fluid on the ramp can become VERY slick and unsafe for rampers. If the plane is being sprayed during boarding (which has happened before), you run the risk of someone getting burned by the fluids if the canopy is not all the way down, it puddles in the canopy, it can drip and run near the doors etc. If you’re not boarding, you run the risk of needing to clean it up. -
The space can become VERY cramped.
----- How so, you ask? At MANY airports, vehicles can NOT drive UNDER the jetbridge… There’s other equipment around, and you’re trying to spray a whole plane (from a safe distance) while dodging everything else around you. -
The aircraft may not get a full service.
----- While de-icing at the gate can be useful or save time, it can cause a lack of certain surfaces to get sprayed correctly, or at all. If you spray (as the picture shows) with the bridge pulled up, if anything is frozen around the door, you cannot spray it as it’s all covered.
I know here at HSV, because of our design, we push out the gate (about 2 plane lengths out) and deice on the apron there. It gives the trucks more room to move, and if the gate is needed, it gets to be utilized even though that aircraft is still on the ground.