A comparison study of utilizing thermal effects of a Dielectric-Barrier-Discharge (DBD) plasma actuator and a conventional electrical film heater for aircraft icing mitigation was performed in an Icing Research Tunnel available at Iowa State University (i.e., ISU -IRT). A NACA0012 airfoil/wing model embedded with an AC-DBD plasma actuator and a conventional electrical film heater over the airfoil surface was tested under a typical aircraft icing condition. While a high-speed imaging system was used to record the dynamic ice accretion and transient surface water transport processes over the airfoil surface, an infrared (IR) thermal imaging system was also utilized to map the corresponding surface temperature distributions over the airfoil surface simultaneously to quantify the unsteady heat transfer and phase changing process over the ice accreting airfoil surface. It was found that, for the same input power, the AC-DBD plasma actuator and the electrical film heater showed almost the equivalent effectiveness in preventing ice accretion over the airfoil surface. With the same total power input, further optimization of the AC-DBD plasma actuator with a duty-cycle modulation was found to have a better anti-/de-icing performance, in comparison to the conventional electrical film heater. The findings derived from the present study demonstrated the potential of a new class of anti-/de-icing strategy by leveraging the thermal effects of DBD plasma actuators for aircraft in-flight icing mitigation.