When dogs get wet, they give their coats a good shake to get rid of the water. The same approach could work for aircraft when ice collects on their wings during cold weather.
When ice builds up while flying through cloud, rain or drizzle it alters the aircraft's handling, making it more difficult for the pilot to control. This is because ice roughens the wing surface, increasing drag and decreasing lift. An aircraft may even lose so much height that it crashes, as happened in 1994 at Roselawn, Indiana, when 68 people died.
Large aircraft such as Boeing 747s can direct hot engine air onto their wings to keep them ice-free, but smaller planes carrying 100 people or less cannot spare the fuel. Instead, the wings have built-in electric heaters to melt the ice, or rubber strips that inflate to break it off. Both these fixes require expensive structural changes ...
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