Fall of Ice from the Sky

Book excerpt: Reports of the Incidents of fall of large ice blocks from the sky have been appearing in media since times. These ice chunks, also known as “Blue ice” or “Aircraft Ice” happen to be the frozen mixture of human bio-waste and liquid disinfectant, that emerge in the form of the leakage from the defective toilet lines from a commercial airliner or any other transport category aircraft carrying passengers. The book gives an account of more than 600 such cases of ice fall worldwide extracted from various languages. Many people believe that the colour of ice blocks fallen from the aircraft toilets must be Blue or Green, but as a matter of fact, it could be of any colour, blue, green, yellowish, rusty, muddy, ash, white, dirty, or colourless. These ice blocks are potential hazards that are likely to endanger the lives and properties on the ground. As, the incidents are generally viewed from the perspective of weather and therefore, no preventive measures are contemplated against them. However, a majority of them are actually found to be aviation-related, and thus there appears to be some possibility of minimising them provided appropriate precautionary measures are taken and implemented in the matter by the airlines, regulatory authorities for aviation and other concerned. "This is the first occasion that a book on the topic of ice-fall from the sky has been written by an aviation expert, who has done it after conducting high-quality research work considering various aeronautical aspects as well as the facts & figures related to aviation - Satendra Singh, Former DGCA, India"