Poison fumes risk on holiday flights
DISASTER looms for a British passenger jet unless airlines are forced to monitor toxic fumes seeping into the cabin.
Experts warned of a catastrophe after the Sunday Express obtained new figures showing a host of incidents where pilots have sent out Mayday alerts after becoming unwell.
Without special equipment to monitor the fumes pilots have had to rely on their noses.
However, in some cases before they realised the danger, fumes made them so ill they struggled to concentrate.
In one incident a pilot’s vision was affected so badly that he could not see the runway.
Data from the air safety watchdog, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA),
PERIL: How the Sunday Express exposed the risk in March and October last year has revealed 58 cases in the past two years when fumes forced pilots to don oxygen masks.
In some cases aircraft had to make emergency landings, airport medical staff and fire crews were put on standby and engineers spent hours trying to find the source of the problem.
In many of these incidents passengers would not have known the flight crew had put on their masks.
The problems are thought to stem from fundamental design faults in how air enters the cabin.
Almost all planes use air that is sucked through the jet engines and bled into the cabin without any filtering process. It means that any oil leaks in the engine at high temperatures can cause toxic air, an issue investigated by the Sunday Express last year.
Dr Susan Michaelis, a former pilot who became the first person to gain a PHD in this area last year, is now head of research at the Global Cabin Air Quality Executive.
She said: “The industry are so very busy denying there is a problem that they have no time remaining to look at the evidence.
“This is reprehensible conduct at its best. Just imagine if the crew in perhaps one or two of those incidents had not put on oxygen. It could have been a disaster.”
Former pilot Captain John Hoyte, who chairs the Aerotoxic Association, called the CAA data just the “tip of the iceberg” as many cases went unreported and said there was a lack of concern for passenger health.
In 58 cases logged by the CAA nine led to full Mayday emergency calls, with another 22 classified at the lower level Possible Assistance Needed alert. The cases included: The flight crew of a Dash 8 plane with 61 passengers travelling from Belfast to Glasgow on March 25, 2010, ended up in hospital after “sickly sweet fumes” filled the cabin. The pilot’s vision was so badly affected he lost sight of the runway on the approach and his co-pilot had to take over.
A Boeing 757 flying from Heathrow to Barcelona had to return to London when fumes in the cabin forced the pilot and first officer to put on their oxygen masks.
The flight crew of a Boeing 767 with 155 passengers put on oxygen masks after complaining of feeling light-headed when a strong oily smell seeped into the flight deck. The Heathrow to Dubai plane landed safely.
Investigators failed to discover what caused these three incidents.
A CAA spokesman said: “Pilots’ use of oxygen masks is a well-known and practised procedure to ensure flight safety. However, the Cranfield University report of May 2011 found no evidence of pollutants occurring in cabin air at levels exceeding available health and safety standards and guidelines.”