Comment by NegativeLatency
1 month ago
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.
I also don't have a pretty sensitive smell and I smelled it a lot, especially cherosene like while boarding and before or during taxing, but later gets better.
it happened to me only on certain planes or cheaper airlines and i never managed to correlate it enough to plane, situation or airline.
the smell is very pungent and scratches the throats, typical fulel /exhaust like.
I learned about the air system passing through the motor because of the safety incident case, where the safety for engine malfunctioned and junctioned high temperature engine oil into the air system when triggered, causing cabin and pilot problems breathing and visibility.
does anybody know which conditions usually trigger this fuel like smell and perhaps which engine models are more prone to such condition?
the fact that it goes away when flying let me me think something related to systems used when on ground
The conditions that trigger the "Fuel like smell" of kerosene is that you are in a place where thousands of gallons of actual kerosene are handled, moved, spilled, and burned every day.
The air quality at an airport is horrific, in general, and as long as the plane is on the ground, it will be moving that air into the cabin.
People notice it because you go from highly filtered, airport air, to unfiltered air on the jetway, to possibly filtered (depending on specifics) air from the ground equipment, to bleed pack air.
It goes away when you are flying because the air quality 4000 feet above the airport is so much better.
The oil seals in a jet engine are not magically perfect, and so there is absolutely some miniscule amount getting into bleed air. But bleed air comes out from the compressor section, before any fuel can be there, and modern jet engines are exceptionally good one way valves (compressor stall is the term for when they aren't). Engine oil consumption is also monitored for every single flight, but not to that level of precision.
If the smell goes away in the air, it cannot be related to small amounts of oil vapor coming from the engine compressor section. Because that would still be present at 30k feet.
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