Comment by 4d4m
1 month ago
Boeing, Bombardier, Learjet, Embraer and Airbus should be forced to clean up aircraft cabin air they poison us with.
For people who don’t know how GROSS this is: on almost every modern passenger jet, the air you breathe is pulled through the engine’s Bleed-Air system before entering the cabin. As oil, hydraulic fluid, or other contaminants leak into that system, those superheated fumes can be pumped directly into the cockpit and cabin. These incidents are literally called "fume events" and are the basis of the "gym sock" smell you can detect when in airports or on a plane, especially during takeoff and landing. This is so pervasive you'll see airline attendants spraying glycol-based air fresheners during these times to COVER UP the smell of this toxic stuff.
[FAA overview](https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/cabin-air-quality-0)
And no, the HEPA filter people like to point to does not make this problem disappear. HEPA filtration primarily cleans recirculated particles. It does not magically remove every gas, vapor, or contaminant entering through the aircraft’s air-supply system.
[FAA research](https://www.faa.gov/sites/faa.gov/files/data_research/resear...)
The absurd part is that we already know how to avoid this architecture. The Boeing 787 is the major commercial exception: its cabin air is supplied by dedicated electric compressors rather than engine bleed air.
So this is not some unsolved engineering problem. The industry made a DESIGN choice to KEEP using a system capable of feeding contaminated engine air into a sealed tube full of passengers, pilots, and flight attendants. Zero regard for their well-being in order to save a few pounds and eck-out more miles per gallon.
Flight crews spend thousands of hours breathing this air over their careers. Passengers have no meaningful ability to know when contamination occurs or opt out. Manufacturers and airlines alike are afraid to put contamination sensors on their planes because it exposes them to liability - it shows the true extent of the problem.
That is not an acceptable health standard in 2026, and it wasn't when these decisions were made. Fix the source, stop pretending filtration alone solves it, and make bleed-air-free cabin ventilation the standard for new aircraft. Demand this from your regulator or determine who is responsible for your health effects.
> This is so pervasive you'll see airline attendants spraying glycol-based air fresheners during these times to COVER UP the smell of this toxic stuff
I've never once seen a flight attendant do that. Flown hundreds and hundreds of times. You'd think something that's "so pervasive" would have been common enough that I'd have seen it dozens of times?
https://farahandfarah.com/blog/toxic-airplane-fumes-workers-...
Feels like youre defensive about this would love to know why. If you havent seen aerosols on a flight youre being disengenous or are not looking up/around. They are used for lavoratories and pest fumiagation during passengered flights regularly - and those are uses we agreed to as a society. Ive seen firsthand them sprayed during takeoff and landing at the time fume events are most noticed by passengers.
Disclaimer: I am an aviation enthusiast and loves planes and their design. I am unaffiliated with any airline or manufacturer. I want everyone to breathe ok.
FWIW I probably 2-5 round trips per year and I’ve never seen a flight attendant spraying anything
> Feels like youre defensive about this would love to know why.
It couldn't possibly be that someone else has real-world experiences that differ from your own?
> If you havent seen aerosols on a flight youre being disengenous or are not looking up/around.
Or they just actually really weren't used on any of the flights GP was on?
> Ive seen firsthand them sprayed during takeoff and landing
GP hasn't, and neither have I.
Your experiences are not universal and it is impolite to accuse others of being "disingenuous" simply for reporting experiences that differ from your own.
> These incidents are literally called "fume events"
Your first FAA link says that these 'fume events' are rare: "The report found that the rate of cabin air quality events is less than 33 events per million aircraft departures." This is about one event every 30,000 flights.
I have a pretty sensitive sense of smell, and I regularly smell oil/smoke/hydrocarbon smell after they're starting the engines. It also sticks on your clothes after the plane ride, and I'm quite sure it's not just stinky seat smell.
I usually smell it too. I've noticed its when they switch from the air handler provided by the jetway (big yellow hose) to the plane's onboard system. Perhaps there's some sequencing procedure that the staff is moving through too quickly trying to get the plane out on time, or it's just an acceptable amount of cross-contamination.
It's probably good old "normalization of deviance". Smelling exhaust/fumes is common enough that it would not get reported unless someone has a medical event. And reporting it would require investigation and downtime which management would frown upon.
I don't have a sensitive sense of smell and I still smell it.
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https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/study-shows-toxic-...
If you think of the last 10 flights you were on, how many had the gym sock smell? That's the real occurence rate. I'd say in my experience across all airlines its around 7/10 flights I can detect via smell a fume event.
Of the last 50 flights I took, none had gym sock smell.
If anything smelled it's usually due to a passenger. But nothing from the aircraft itself
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There is one specific plane type (Airbus A320) that has significantly more fume events than all other plane types, suggesting that plane type or associated engine has a design or procedural flaw.
Since airlines consolidate on specific types, it is possible that some travelers experience this problem often and others very rarely.
Through no choice of my own, I seem to only fly on Boeing 737s, but the one recent time I was on an Airbus (A321neo) there was a distinct exhaust odor upon engine startup.
In my experience, a large fraction of flights have very stinky air during a substantial portion of the time from when the engines start until takeoff. Whether this is “gym sock” or something else has never been entirely clear to me.
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I’ve never noticed this in 35 years and I have an unusually sensitive sense of smell.
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That sounds awful; it means 3+ times a day a whole plane of a passengers is getting sprayed with this stuff.
There are more than 100,000 flights per day. So not that rare at all.
The article specifically says flight attendants are only at increased risk of radiation related cancers, but not others.
Quite interesting. My reaction is that one of these is much more easily controlled and an input for cancer than the other. Radiation shielding is a tougher solve due to weight and other factors, where air quality is an easy, known fix.
Would love both to be solved, which would lead to good outcomes. Any thoughts on why attendants have different outcomes?
Off topic: when did using solve as a noun take off? There are so many good nouns that work there (challenge, task, etc...) or use the verb form (is tougher to solve).
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The Boeing 787 has a bleedless system. It uses dedicated electric compressors for the cabin air.
That's interesting to know (thanks for calling it out!), and makes me feel extra glad I've worn a mask during the entire flight on every flight I've been on since 2020 (not that I've been on many)... turns out I was avoiding a lot more than just COVID etc. heh >_<
I believe the pilots air source works differently than the rest of the cabin - at least on the 737. Maybe that explains the difference between the pilots and the flight attendants.
The 787 in economy (as configured by most airlines) is hell in every other way so boy what a quandary
> oil, hydraulic fluid, or other contaminants
Will safe aerospace batteries spare us from this?
Recently designed a sustainable thermofluid that it says would work as hydraulic fluid and a de-icing fluid: LBGPC: Lignin, BioPG, Graphene, Phytic acid, Citric acid
Like others, I have zero experience with any of the things you are mentioning, but I want flying to be more expensive, more luxurious, and far more comfortable in general for everyone so please keep giving them a hard time about this.
In general, 50% or more of the people flying should not be flying, and going back to the pre-privatization era alongside much stricter regulations on seat sizes would be awesome as it would force actual economics of scale to kick in for the good seats and keep the burger king crown wearing crowd ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onib3bDo6Z0 ) off these airplanes for good.
Feel free to pay extra for the fancy seats up front, known as either first class or business class depending on the airline you're flying (I've seen other names for them like "premier" or something, too). But if you keep up the "I know what's best for other people" attitude that you display in your second paragraph, don't be surprised if people start thinking... poorly of you. (I rewrote that sentence multiple times. That's the kindest way I can put it. A lot of my earlier drafts were... more unkind).
The problem is that in the current world business class is overpriced because economics of scale don’t kick in and they know they can get away with far higher margins.
The point is to make business class the worst class of cabin, so the average cost/profitability will look a lot closer to current economy.
And yes airlines have razor thin margins. This is why privatizing them is a mistake. I the taxpayer am just fine with my tax dollars going to force the air industry to stop committing war crimes in the sky with their garbage economy seats and garbage treatment of the average flyer.
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Oh how the middle class hates having to share with the poor.
We don’t mind the rich flying private jets, but for the love of god don’t put a poor person next to us on a plane.
This but unironically.
The rich smell better than I do. I can learn from them.