If you drive a car, you know the importance of having a clean windshield. Rain, dirt, dust and bugs all play a role in your windshield becoming unclear, dirty and/or marked up. That, in turn, can make it more difficult to see out the windshield, especially when you’re facing the glare of sunlight or the lights from other cars. Fortunately, you can clean a car’s windshield easily enough, either in a car wash, or manually.
But think about planes for a second. Their windshield is also subject to some degree of rain, dust, dirt, bugs and maybe even the occasional bird (bird strikes are a whole other thing – they’ve been known to break a plane’s windshield, force emergency landings, etc.).
If you’re the pilot of a plane, you’re going to want your windshield to be as free from all those marks as possible. But it’s not like you can go to the gas station and use their squeegee to clean the windshield quickly. So what’s a pilot of a commercial plane to do?
The inside of a cockpit window is easy to clean because it’s generally within reach. The outside is another story.
There are some planes, such as A320s (you know how to tell the difference between Airbus and Boeing planes, right?), that have side windows in the cockpit which can slide open up and a pilot can, with relative ease, clean the outside of the plexiglass.
PC: Capt. Joe / YouTube
However, the side windows of other planes, such as 747s (granted, back when they were still The Queen of the Sky), didn’t open.
Otherwise, when the plane is on the ground and the motors are off, the pilot can ask for window cleaning service from an airport’s maintenance team.
Although the goal is the same (clean windshield), the service can vary from location to location.
At some airports, the crew that handles this job uses a cherry picker to reach the windows. They also use a specially made liquid, in a spray bottle, that can soak the bugs and “crud.” They do that so they can be more easily removed at the next step, which is when they use a lint-free cleaning cloth (Boeing requires this in their specs, to avoid scratching the windshield).
Other airports use a long-handled sponge soaked in a cleaner solution to clean the windshields, followed by high-pressure water (obviously not Boeing windshields LOL).
Some other fun facts:
- Since plane windshields have heaters, the pilots need to ensure they’re in the “off” position before the cleaning process begins, or the liquid will stick to the windshields and streak (also, when cleaning the inside, the heaters being on puts whoever is cleaning the window at risk of electrocution).
- Windshields are only wiped clean in an up-and-down direction, to avoid streaks.
- Despite rumors that’ve been going on for years, pilots don’t use Coca-Cola to clean their plane windshields (even though yes the pH would disintegrate the bugs)
- Commercials DO have windshield wipers, but they’re really only effective for rain during takeoff and landing…not to get rid of the gunk like bugs.
This video can explain it a whole lot better than I can:
Feature photo (cropped): H. Michael Miley / Wikimedia / CC BY-SA 2.0 DEED
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