Toxic Fumes Are Leaking Into Airplanes, Sickening Crews and Passengers (msn.com) 37
Toxic fumes from jet engines are leaking into aircraft cabins at an accelerating rate, reaching 108 incidents per million departures in 2024 compared to 12 in 2014, a Wall Street Journal investigation found. The fumes contain neurotoxins and carbon monoxide that have caused brain injuries in crew members. JetBlue flight attendant Florence Chesson suffered permanent neurological damage after inhaling engine oil vapors in 2018, diagnosed by neurologists as equivalent to an NFL linebacker's concussion.
The surge is driven by Airbus A320 aircraft, particularly the A320neo model introduced in 2016. WSJ reports Airbus loosened maintenance requirements under airline pressure despite knowing the changes would increase incidents. The FAA received over 700 fume event reports from major U.S. airlines in 2024. Most commercial jets except Boeing's 787 use a "bleed air" system that pulls cabin air through engines.
The surge is driven by Airbus A320 aircraft, particularly the A320neo model introduced in 2016. WSJ reports Airbus loosened maintenance requirements under airline pressure despite knowing the changes would increase incidents. The FAA received over 700 fume event reports from major U.S. airlines in 2024. Most commercial jets except Boeing's 787 use a "bleed air" system that pulls cabin air through engines.
Poor Boeing. (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Poor Boeing. (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:1)
These events have been reported ever since smoking was banned on commercial jets, a lot earlier than 2010, but were dismissed as a conspiracy theory / gripe at not being able to spark up any more / fear mongering / flat out lies.
Re:That's no conspiracy also airplane tire (Score:4, Insightful)
1) smog is not tire particulates. It's a mix of nitrogen oxides and volatile organic chemicals. These react under UV and turn a beautiful brown color.
2) A Model 3 weighs less than the average vehicle in the United States.
3) EVs tend to have long-life low-wear lower-traction tires. This is because computer control of the power application makes sticky tires less important.
Fuck off, and quit spreading misinformation.
Re: (Score:1)
My personal experience from driving a Tesla YLR for 4 years including a round trip coast-to-coast across the coterminous USA is at variance with your statement. My OEM Tesla Y tires were quite worn out by 30K miles. The increased cost of the tires negates the reduced cost of all the other unneeded maintenance.
You're right that they were low traction. Tires that do what tires used to be expected to do (stop quickly) wear out even faster, cost up to $400/tire, and hurt the range by 20%.
It sounds like yo
Re: (Score:2)
I have 2 coworkers with Teslas. A Model 3 LR (single motor), and a Model Y Performance.
They both claim, as of this minute on our group text thread, "around 40k" per set of shoes.
This is for a vehicle with 271hp, and a vehicle with 460hp. Surprising they they're even similar, but then again- the Y has 4 driven wheels, not 2. Expensive.
My Mustang does around 20k per set of shoes (rear only, fortunately)- you dual-motor people are learning what my sis
Re: (Score:2)
What's that got to do with incidents getting worse in recent years?
Re:Poor Boeing. (Score:5, Interesting)
You're missing that both a bleed air system AND poor maintenance are required for this problem to manifest.
Presumably the other planes with a bleed air system are getting better maintenance, so haven't been a problem. No idea how the 787's maintenance is, but since it doesn't have a bleed air system, the problem of dangerously contaminated cabin air hasn't manifested.
More specifically, this happens when engine oil or hydraulic fluid leak into the engine while bleed air is being drawn.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not even a question of maintenance, it's treating the failure as transient instead of requiring repair.
It's allows neigh deadly air contamination, starting at the cockpit for extra fun, and they don't even repair it when it occurs.
Re: (Score:2)
You're missing that both a bleed air system AND poor maintenance are required for this problem to manifest.
Presumably the other planes with a bleed air system are getting better maintenance, so haven't been a problem. No idea how the 787's maintenance is, but since it doesn't have a bleed air system, the problem of dangerously contaminated cabin air hasn't manifested.
Yep, according to The Fine Summary, it's largely due to more lax maintenance schedules being driven by airlines rather than aircraft manufacturers. So the airlines want to save a few pennies on filters, seals, other parts and the time and staff to fit them.. and fuck anyone who gets sick in the process of making money.
Re:Poor Boeing. (Score:4, Informative)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re:Poor Boeing. (Score:4, Interesting)
If it helps overcome your knee-jerk Airbus vs. Boeing hang-ups, 737 MAX has a known failure mode [youtube.com] that will rapidly gas the cockpit with vaporized oil. Equipped with this necessary whataboutery affordance, you should feel safe in at least allowing for the possibility that Airbus is also not flawless in all things.
Cockpits and cabins have been getting filled with various gasses since the inception of pressurization ~80 years ago. To Boeing's credit, the 787 has set a legitimate engineering precedent in aircraft design and eliminated at least some of the major sources of air contamination. Eventually, when Airbus copies it, you'll be able to safely ignore this. So no worries.
Re: (Score:3)
I've had stinky bleed air on every plane in the sky except for the '87. The system needs to go the fuck away.
It may be more likely on A320s, but I've had it plenty of times on 737s old and new.
Re: (Score:3)
Hell, everything about that plane is really fucking nice.
Except for the windows that are entirely under the control of the cabin crew who will decide when you are allowed, or not allowed, to look out of them. If they would replace them with mechanical blinds or remove the ability for the cabin crew to be able to force them to go opaque I'd agree with you.
Re: (Score:2)
Except for the windows that are entirely under the control of the cabin crew who will decide when you are allowed, or not allowed, to look out of them.
Haven't had that experience. That's up to the airlines.
Re: (Score:2)
Except for the windows that are entirely under the control of the cabin crew who will decide when you are allowed, or not allowed, to look out of them.
I was on a flight this weekend where cabin crew asked passengers to open their blinds for takeoff/landing and close them for the overnight portion of the flight. Mechanical blinds are also under the control of the cabin crew, unless your plan is to refuse to comply.
Re: (Score:2)
The former is law compliance, basically. The latter is company policy.
Re: (Score:2)
I rarely, if ever get questioned by cabin crew when I'm doing that and even when I am quest
Re: (Score:2)
Experienced this (Score:4, Informative)
I left a feedback on the airline website about it, but never heard anything back from them on it.
Seems like Airbus's 737 Max (Score:3)
The way Airbus is downplaying this and refusing to reinstate the old maintenance regime tells me this is a near bankruptcy level design flaw, a ground the fleet level fuck up.
Re: (Score:2)
It seems that a part of the problem is switching off the airplane for the night too quickly, before all of the oil in the APU returns to the oil sump, giving false indication to the technicians who, in turn, top up the oil to the max, so on the next APU start the oil overflows.
Re: (Score:2)
They'd better fix it, before they kill a cockpit crew and by extension a plane full of passengers. Given what has already happened, this is not an unlikely failure mode.
Re: (Score:2)
Alas it is very difficult to fix people who do things their way despite knowing better.
Re: (Score:2)
Except it is not a design flaw and has nothing to do with design flaws. It's to do with maintenance issues on engines which make the Airbus planes in question slightly worse than all others. The only aircraft which won't experience this is a 787 since it gets air in a fundamentally different way. There's nothing to change on existing planes, and not only will no one go bankrupt over this, it won't even move the share price.
Re: (Score:2)
The occurrences exploded after they stopped revisions every time it happened, because the operators found it too expensive/unreliable. So even at that point, it was not a maintenance issue, but a repair issue.
For it to be preventative/maintenance the revisions would have to be performed even more often than that, which would be even more expensive. A plane too expensive to maintain in a state where it doesn't routinely poison the crew and passengers has a design flaw.
Re: (Score:2)
Whether you call it a design flaw or not is in the eye of the beholder. Like TFA points out the A320's Neo engine seals wear out a lot faster so it leaks a lot more and it's not "slightly worse" it's a multiple worse. So it's like a car model that bursts into flames 5x as often as others of its type. It's still generally speaking a safe car but in modern production goods... that's considered a "design flaw".
Also what can be done on existing planes is to retrofit an air sensor and filter system it w
Re: (Score:2)
The way Airbus is downplaying this and refusing to reinstate the old maintenance regime tells me this is a near bankruptcy level design flaw, a ground the fleet level fuck up.
Nice try to compare this to a fatal flaw that killed 350 people... but no cigar.
An issue that still hasn't been fixed.
You should also note that Airbus didn't want to reduce the maintenance requirements, they did so at the continual demand of customers (meaning airlines). If an airline is still following the recommended schedule and procedures, the problem doesn't manifest.
Boeing is doing the same thing but they aren't even trying oppose it, they're happy to make their aircraft less safe.
Re: (Score:2)
Not maintenance, repair.
Operators : Take away the legal culpability for dangerously ignoring the need for prohibitively expensive frequent repairs from us, or no more sales. Airbus : Okey dokey.
If this goes wrong and a plane crashes (not unrealistic when a pilot had to leave the cockpit and then couldn't stand any more), the changes to the repair recommendations are going to hang them. Hell, if there are too many long term health problems a class action could destroy them too.
Re: (Score:2)
Sounds like it's more likely an issue with the engines. Engine oil is getting into the cabin air, which is outside air that comes into the engine, gets heated, and a small amount of siphoned off to the cabin. The leak is in the engine somewhere.
There will be filters for that air, and it sounds like airlines have been pressuring Airbus to reduce the maintenance on them, which now and then means they fail to stop the vaporized oil getting through.
Simply increasing the maintenance should be enough to resolve t
Re: (Score:2)
If it was simple, they'd do it. Even repairing it when there was a failure was already too expensive, they are just gambling on it being transient now.
Doing maintenance at the frequency needed is clearly almost impossible ... people need to die before it happens.
TFA is excellent (Score:3)
TFA is excellent and worth a full read.
it addresses a lot of the knee jerk concerns voiced above about Airbus vs Boeing.
This is a real problem where the industry has downplayed the issue for decades.
(and that Mentour Pilot YT video covers a particular disastrous failure mode that TFA doesn't get into, but TFA is great on the chronic issue)
Known for decades by Boeing/Airbus (Score:2)
Air for the cabin and cockpit is coming in through the engines and takes lubricant oil and burned up toxic remains with it as well.
Especially at take off you can usually smell this.
I think it was called air-bleed intake.
Boeing and Airbus have know about this for decades but it takes an extra 100,000$ to fit a plane with a device that prevents this kind of polluted air from entering the cabin.
When the lubricant system is malfunctioning the whole cabin can fill with smoke and planes are usually grounded and p
Re: (Score:2)
Nothing new (Score:2)
To be clear... (Score:5, Informative)
the bleed air systems of airliners DO NOT use air that has gone [as implied] all the way through the engine.
Essentially, what's happening is that the cabin needs to be pressurized for the safety and comfort of the people on board, and the jet already has one or more air compressors on board (each engine effectively IS one) so to save weight and complexity the compressor PORTION of the engine is doing double-duty. A jet engine essentially sucks cold clean low pressure air in the front, runs it through a bunch of fan blades to compress it, (with a side-effect that it gets quite warm) then runs it into a cumbustor section where fuel and fire are introduced to drive the temp way up, thus driving the pressure way up, and then into the tailpipe where it exits the engine for thrust. The bleed air system taps into the warm compressed air BEFORE the combustor stage and routes some of that air to anti-icing systems and such, but also cools and routes some of that air into the cabin. Since outside air at high altitudes is generally quite clean, these systems are often unfiltered. The problems generally are tied to things like lubrication fluids contaminating, or engine/plane specific failure modes.
The AOPA has a nice page on it here [aopa.org] for those interested.