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Toxic fumes seep into the air you breathe on planes

latimes.com

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Re: Toxic fumes seep into the air you breathe on planes

#111

Post by benhurmarcel »

sjg007 wrote: post #74
vmception wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like they are intentionally asking for regulation, saying they have absolutely no consensus mechanism to do what is necessary until Congress forces them to

They are already regulated but apparently this is most likely a major and intentional oversight. Why? My best guess as to why you can't have a separate air intake from bleed air is that you need the pressurization and the heat. And the extra weight of a different system is cost prohibitive and maybe less reliable. I would hope you could have a primary system that was all electric and taken from a safer bleed or entir…

> why you can't have a separate air intake from bleed air

You can, the 787 does it, but it has significant drawbacks as well. Also it basically can't be retrofitted onto an existing aircraft series.

Re: Toxic fumes seep into the air you breathe on planes

#112

Post by benhurmarcel »

waiseristy wrote: post #109
rowanG077 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course they can. Air quality is not binary. Air can be clean yet it could also be cleaner.

I don't think Boeings primary reason for switching to no-bleed air was air quality reasons anyway. Electrically powered air is way lighter, more reliable, efficient, etc...

It's not that straightforward. I work in that domain and the general consensus is that the 787 system is about as efficient as a conventional bleed system would be. It doesn't offer any significant efficiency advantage.

The mechanical power offtake affects the engine fuel consumption less than the equivalent bleed offtake, but on the other hand their system is significantly heavier, and creates a lot more drag.

Basically, the engine compressor is the best compressor you will find aboard. To provide air supply you need pressurized air. So it makes sense to directly take the compressed air you already have with that excellent compressor. With their bleedless system they add 2 large extra electrical compressors, and 2 large extra air intakes (to take the air to be compressed). So of course there are advantages to the electrical route, but efficiency isn't a given.

Re: Toxic fumes seep into the air you breathe on planes

#113

Post by benhurmarcel »

prima-facie wrote: post #41
jim-jim-jim wrote: post #2

Great article. If Boeing won't install them and flight crews can't use them, is there anything stopping normal passengers from bringing detection equipment in their carry on luggage?

CO detectors are very compact and could be taken on board with the hand luggage.

The concern isn't about CO.

Re: Toxic fumes seep into the air you breathe on planes

#114

Post by llampx »

gen220 wrote: post #39
vecinu wrote: post #19

Does anyone else have a hard time putting up with flying (pre-pandemic) recently? 20 years ago I used to fly without any issue but since they've made the seats smaller, the food somehow got worse and the TSA pre-boarding eats another hour of time I wouldn't have spent in the airport. I recently started trying to fly business class to actually arrive at my destination like a functioning human being and not anxious/sic…

We travel around 300 miles pretty regularly to visit family. Over the years we’ve tried almost every form of transportation: train, renting a car, flying, dirt cheap buses, very fancy buses. Bang for the buck, I’d say our preference became car, train, fancy bus, flying, bad bus. They all pretty much take the same time, door to door, because the airports are not particularly accessible from our starting point and dest…

Thanks for sharing your experience. With anything under 6-8 hours of driving, if a car, train or bus is available I'd take that.

First off, getting to the airport is guaranteed time lost since airports are nowhere near where I want to end up. Second, the security theater. Take off your shoes, belt, get X-rayed.

Next come the delays. The worst is when you can be stuck on the tarmac for hours and you can't even get up to go to the toilet or stretch your legs. If a train is stuck you can get up and walk around and if you have a car you can take a break.

Definitely the most inflexible form of travel.

Re: Toxic fumes seep into the air you breathe on planes

#115

Post by andy_ppp »

serf wrote: post #103
andy_ppp wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Airbus are European, of course they have better safety standards and working culture than American companies ;-)

> Airbus are European, of course they have better safety standards and working culture than American companies ;-) Substantiate your stereotyping. I'm not saying it is or isn't true, I'm saying that such broad stereotyping without reasoning comes off as bias.

The winking smiley should give you a clue to say I’m being deliberately provocative... I think the company culture is probably more important than any regulatory practices or geographical locations.

Re: Toxic fumes seep into the air you breathe on planes

#116

Post by mannykannot »

matt123456789 wrote: post #70
jeffrey_t_b wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say "designed to avoid this problem", because I'm pretty sure that cabin air quality didn't play much of a role in the engineering trades regarding ECS architecture. The 787 was intended as a more electric aircraft, from the very start, even called the "7E7" during development. An electrical ECS requires special cabin air compressors with big motor drives and power electronics, but there was significant sa…

What drives the vendors to create those products if nobody is buying them?

Here's a fairly detailed article on the issue:

https://www.boeing.com/commercial/aeromagazine/articles/qtr_...

The main points are increased efficiency and decreased maintenance costs.

Re: Toxic fumes seep into the air you breathe on planes

#117

Post by ashtonkem »

benhurmarcel wrote: post #110
ImprovedSilence wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Several examples of fume events in the article are from Airbus planes as well, especially Jet Blue ones. I suspect because Boeing is closer to home, the journalists have more insider insight as to the internal decisions to not do anything at Boeing, thus putting them in an even more negative light. I would guess Airbus is just as bad. The actual airlines seem to be neglegent as well, fighting to not pay workers comp.

All airliners (except the 787) use the same technology when it comes to air supply. They even buy the equipment from the same suppliers (engines, heat exchanger, ozone converter, packs…). The risk of fumes is exactly the same on all brands (again, except the 787).

That’s not true. The actual design of the bleed system matters a lot, as does the recommendations for seal maintenance.

Re: Toxic fumes seep into the air you breathe on planes

#118

Post by ashtonkem »

ImprovedSilence wrote: post #88
ashtonkem wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At every turn, Boeing is making it very hard to not commit to flying AirBus.

Several examples of fume events in the article are from Airbus planes as well, especially Jet Blue ones. I suspect because Boeing is closer to home, the journalists have more insider insight as to the internal decisions to not do anything at Boeing, thus putting them in an even more negative light. I would guess Airbus is just as bad. The actual airlines seem to be neglegent as well, fighting to not pay workers comp.

As I said in another comment; I don’t want to put Airbus on a pedestal here, but the internal emails from Boeing are incredibly damning towards the company culture. Painting people concerned about breathing in fumes as having an “agenda” is a perfect stereotype of corporate malice, it’s almost beyond parody.

I’ve never seen such emails out of Airbus, although it’s entirely possible that that’s because they’re in another language and therefore they haven’t made it to the English only media I consume.

Re: Toxic fumes seep into the air you breathe on planes

#119

Post by benhurmarcel »

ashtonkem wrote: post #117
benhurmarcel wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All airliners (except the 787) use the same technology when it comes to air supply. They even buy the equipment from the same suppliers (engines, heat exchanger, ozone converter, packs…). The risk of fumes is exactly the same on all brands (again, except the 787).

That’s not true. The actual design of the bleed system matters a lot, as does the recommendations for seal maintenance.

The fumes come from the engine, there's nothing the bleed system can do to mitigate that. All bleed components already don't use any lubricant, they don't add any fume. Also all bleed systems across the whole industry have an extremely similar architecture.

So in the end the component that really matters for this is the engine. And both Airbus and Boeing use very similar engines from the same suppliers. And the engine manufacturer defines the maintenance tasks for it.

Re: Toxic fumes seep into the air you breathe on planes

#120

Post by colechristensen »

kaikai wrote: post #37
jim-jim-jim wrote: post #2

Great article. If Boeing won't install them and flight crews can't use them, is there anything stopping normal passengers from bringing detection equipment in their carry on luggage?

The TSA might have something to say about carrying unusual electronics into a airplane

I have carried unusual electronics on an airplane, was expecting trouble but nobody cared. It was a small black foam box with a jumble of wires connecting various pieces of equipment for a high altitude balloon experiment carried on the plane somewhere around 2010. got nothing more than a momentary glance
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