Comment by 4d4m
1 month ago
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
We're not talking about stinky passengers, those are normal, expected smells :)
Politely, I don't believe you haven't noticed the smell - this statistically is impossible when at an airport with multiple planes. You can smell it daily, at any airport terminal of your choosing, impossible to ignore when closer to the gates. It's a smell powerful enough to not get eaten by the various encapulation, ozone generators, and air fresheners used in public commerical environments like airports. The smell comes through from the planes and gangways into the terminal itself.
Next trip: With a clear nose, smell the air at the airport entrance and then compare this with the smell closer to your gate. The contaminated airs smell it's very similar to a wet locker room or gym bag that was left for days without cleaning. You won't ever miss it again, and your stat will flip to detected in 50 out 50 visits.
I assure you I'm very sensitive to smells and I haven't smelled anything like that in a plane
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.
I think airplanes reek too, but mostly because the cleaning done on the seats/cabin is pathetic by overworked and underpaid cabin crew, the average American doesn't wash their asshole (no bidet culture in the USA) so they have smeared shit stains on most of their undergarments, standard BO, etc
Coincidentally, when I am flying anywhere in Asia, I get none of this. I'd unironically rather be on an Indian airline for most flights because for all the flack that Indian people get about cleanliness, they're far more likely than the average gringo to have used a bidet at some point in their lives.
I’ve never noticed this in 35 years and I have an unusually sensitive sense of smell.
I don’t think I’ve noticed gym socks smells, but I can certainly smell kerosene basically every time when outdoors at the airport, and often in the plane.
This is because it's an airport and there are tens of thousands of gallons of kerosene around, including several gallons per minute per running jet engine actively burning and turning into combustion products.
Even in a perfectly working bleed air system, the air comes from outside the plane, which on the tarmac of an airport, is god awful, shitty, and not at all healthy.
Lot's of other commenters talking about how the smell goes away at altitude.
Because it doesn't come from the packs (except in fume events), and what people are usually smelling is that airports have very bad air, and that air is much cleaner at 30k feet.
The miniscule oil vapor/droplets that are making their way into the bleed air system from engine compressor seals will still happen at 30k feet. If you don't smell something at all times on a plane, it cannot be coming from that.
This level of contamination would be like working at a gas station, which can be a health hazard. OSHA regulates air quality for employees working around hydrocarbons.
43 years for me, and in addition to being notably smell-sensitive, I’ve also taken a probably close to 500 long haul flights