The Global Airline Industry continues down the path of deep denial as these weekly and sometimes even daily events repeatedly happen worldwide. Cabin Crew have been desperately trying to sound the alarm on this global problem for decades which continues to fall upon deaf ears. How many more Cabin Crew and Passengers have to fall ill from chronic health complications before our world governments, airline management and aircraft manufacturers chose to act ?
That is the million dollar question.
LONDON – British Airways says a plane traveling from San Francisco to London diverted to Vancouver after members of the Crew reported feeling ill. The airline says the 22 Cabin Crew members, 3 Pilots and about two passengers have been taken to hospital for medical checks as a precaution. The Airbus A380 took off around 10 p.m. EDT on Monday and landed in Vancouver several hours later. BA says it is investigating the cause of the incident. The jet can hold 469 passengers but BA did not say exactly how many were aboard. Passengers have been put up in hotels and will be rebooked on other flights.
The airline did not say what the cause of the problem was or what their symptoms were.There has been no confirmation over how many people the Airbus A380 carried. Images showed emergency vehicles surrounding the plane on the tarmac. The flight departed at 19:13 on Monday (02:13 GMT) and landed in the Canadian city several hours later. Passengers on Flight BA 286 from San Francisco to London told how firefighters in full respirators came onto the plane after it was diverted to Vancouver Airport.
Liz Keller, from London, tweeted: ‘Passengers on #ba286 pretty much totally in the dark about what happened onboard or what comes next.’Not reassuring to see firefighters with respirators walking aisles and only be told the crew was taken ill #ba286 ‘And have been told we need to book our own return flights.’
Aerotoxic Syndrome concerns have long been known as problematic in regards to the Airbus A380 Widebody aircraft. A quote below from Speigel Online: ” Reported cases of oil vapors have thus “only” 111. A large part of the incidents concerned the A380 fleet, the slight smell of oil is “for one to two minutes, generally 10 to 15 minutes after the start.” Take the topic of “very seriously”, but also “should be no unnecessary fear”.It is difficult, in view of the security measures of the crews in such a case: preventive oxygen masks or smoke hoods set up to ensure that in the event of the case of the viability of the crew.”
Lufthansa Chief Pilot Werner Knorr has been quoted as saying: ” Dear colleagues in the cabin and in the cockpit, I would just like to take our last “smell event”, taking place on our A380 to Johannesburg last weekend, as an occasion to keep you up to date about our activities concerning the whole issue of cabin air quality in the A380 and also to provide you with some information about the latest case. Maybe the most important message in advance: Lufthansa does take this issue very seriously. We informed you some time ago, that we had had “smell incidents” with our A380-fleet from time to time, but in these cases, the cut-off point, at which authorities had to be informed, had not been reached in most cases. We investigated the problem intensively and at first hoped that the so-called “Baffle-Pate Modification” (see former letter) might solve the problem. But unfortunately, that was not the case. In test runs, one can make out that with these new solutions the behavior of our A380 engines just assimilates with that of our other engines. In addition to that, we decided a few weeks ago that we will provide the whole A380-fleet with combined filters for ozone and “volatile organic substances” (VOC) which will also contribute to reducing odor. The recent ozone-filters do not have any VOC-filter, so with that measure, we take another important step to solving the known A380 issues. I hope that there will be a referendum very soon so that we have a coherent procedure which will be a significant help for the crew members.”
This is just more of the same which is just going down the same path of basically doing nothing more than finding new ways to simply mask the odors rather than fixing the actual problem which is a defective, inferior and dangerous cabin aircraft bleed air design. These problems will continue to happen and crew as well as passengers will keep having the chronic illness until the industry accepts the fact that we need to let go of this dangerous aircraft design altogether. The concept of simply masking odors and placing a band-aid on the problem will never sufficiently fix this situation. It is a very frustrating and futile exercise to watch unfold time and time again.
