The airline industry’s big secret

The airline industry has been keeping a secret from you for years, and it’s one that can seriously affect your health.

Any flight can suffer a ‘fume event’ when engine oil or hydraulic fluid fumes enter the cabin, causing breathing problems, while frequent exposure—which cabin crew experience—can lead to long-term health problems, affecting the nervous system and heart, and even death.

Fume events are happening every day, and the Global Cabin Air Quality Executive (GCAQE), which represents more than 100,000 pilots and cabin crew, has been created to fight for improved cabin air quality.

Fume events are caused by a design flaw in most aircraft when air, which is fed into the cabin from engine compressors, contains oil that has leaked from the engine.

The UK Air Accident Investigations Branch (AAIB) has twice recommended that all aircraft should be equipped with contaminated air warning systems and the US Congress and US National Research Council have called for specialized air filters. Crewmember unions have asked for the same equipment for decades.

All these pleas have been ignored—at least in public.  But behind the scenes, the airline industry is trying to improve things without telling the public.  Oil manufacturer NYCO unveiled a new oil with lower additives at the recent Paris Air Show, and newer planes are using a separate air filtration system that doesn’t pass through the engines.

Meanwhile, GCAQE is trying to get passengers more aware of fume events and has helped in the making of a new film, This Is Your Captain Speaking, which premiered at the Raindance Film Festival last June.

What do you think? Start a conversation over on the... WDDTY Community