The presence of water accumulation on aircraft surfaces constitutes a considerable hazard to both performance and safety, necessitating vigilant inspection and maintenance protocols. In this study, we introduce an innovative semantic segmentation model, grounded in deep learning principles, for the precise identification and delineation of water accumulation areas within infrared images of aircraft exteriors. Our proposed model harnesses the robust features of ResNet, serving as the foundational architecture for U-Net, thereby augmenting the model’s capacity for comprehensive feature characterization. The incorporation of channel attention mechanisms, spatial attention mechanisms, and depthwise separable convolution further refines the network structure, contributing to enhanced segmentation performance. Through rigorous experimentation, our model surpasses existing benchmarks, yielding a commendable 22.44% reduction in computational effort and a substantial 38.89% reduction in parameter count. The model’s outstanding performance is particularly noteworthy, registering a 92.67% mean intersection over union and a 97.97% mean pixel accuracy. The hallmark of our innovation lies in the model’s efficacy in the precise detection and segmentation of water accumulation areas on aircraft skin. Beyond this, our approach holds promise for addressing analogous challenges in aviation and related domains. The enumeration of specific quantitative outcomes underscores the superior efficacy of our model, rendering it a compelling solution for precise detection and segmentation tasks. The demonstrated reductions in computational effort and parameter count underscore the model’s efficiency, fortifying its relevance in broader contexts.