Who Pays the De-Icing Bill?

You fly into Bozeman for a ski week. Your trip is done, and you're not leaving on that plane. But the jet isn't going home. It's flying another trip the next morning.

So it sits outside overnight in a Montana winter, and in the morning it needs de-icing before it can go anywhere. Guess whose invoice that can land on? The client who flew in the day before, who will never set foot on that plane again.

That one gets under my skin. You didn't need de-icing. Your trip was over. You're paying because nobody thought one day ahead.

De-icing gets billed for the conditions on the day, and it's charged by the airport or FBO where the plane sits. It isn't charged by the trip. When an aircraft lands in a cold spot and stays overnight before its next flight, the cost can end up tied to the last trip that brought it there. Nobody is trying to pull one over on you. It's just what happens when no one is looking at the plane's next move.

When I know an aircraft is dropping a client in a cold spot and repositioning for its next trip, we hangar it overnight ahead of time. That costs less than the de-icing, and the client doesn't get a surprise charge a week after a great trip.

• Where does the aircraft go after it drops me off?
• If it stays overnight somewhere cold, is a hangar being arranged?
• If de-icing does come up, who is it billed to?

De-icing is one of the very few costs nobody can know at booking, and it's rare. But most of the time you can see it coming, as long as someone is looking past the day you land. That's part of what you should expect from your broker.