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The author of our report, Tim van Beveren is himself a pilot and an aviation expert.
Mr van Beveren, these fumes don’t occur on every flight.
As a passenger, can I detect the smell?
The problem is everyone’s nose is different ...
and we all have a different sense of smell.
But there are characteristic smells, described as “wet dog” for example,
“dirty socks” or “sweaty feet”. It can also intensify to ...
a bitter-sour smell if it suddenly enters the cabin air.
If it’s a particularly serious incident,
you can even see a bluish smoke in the cabin.
If these fumes escape,
will the affected passengers develop any immediate symptoms?
That’s also dependent on the severity of the event.
It may be that you immediately get symptoms ...
like headache, shortness of breath, dizziness, nausea and vomiting.
We know of flights where dozens of passengers were throwing up.
It may also be that these symptoms only appear a few days after the flight.
In toxicology you always have to determine ...
is it dependent on how high a dose I get, how long have I been exposed,
and so it then depends what will happen in the body.
With these toxins, you can’t just take a blood sample and detect them ...
as with an alcohol test, because they form metabolites in the body ...
which then attack the nervous system. And it can take a while.
We’ve seen how often this occurs.
The airlines themselves are keeping quite guarded?
They are remaining very guarded, yes,
and there is actually a statutory obligation that all incidents like this should be reported.
We have the impression that all airlines aren’t complying.
It is believed that of these incidents,
only 4 to 10 percent are being actually reported.
We have some statistics.
Yes, we have some statistics. However they are from England and are for 2006.
We have very concrete numbers here and you can see:
48 incidents for the Airbus A319, 65 for the Airbus A320,
444 for the Boeing 757 and 233 for the BAe 146 that we saw in the film.
These last two aircraft that are particularly affected, are they still flying?
The Boeing 757 is still flying here in Germany with Condor,
mainly in central Europe but sometimes also on longer routes,
and the BAe 146 and its successor the AVRO ...
are flown by Eurowings and Lufthansa CityLine respectively.
Those were figures from 2006. Are there any more up to date ones?
Unfortunately not. We’ve repeatedly asked the civil aviation authority ...
for recent figures, but they are being very evasive.
We’ve been given a total figure of 15 events for Germany in the last year.
However, through our research alone ...
we can verify a significantly higher number.
The aviation authority is remaining very guarded.
They say “It’s data protection. We don’t want to make it public.”
Of course with that you take the chance of gaining knowledge from the people who have been affected.
But on our internet site we have a document listing specific events that have been reported.
Basically we now have all the events ...
that we were able to research and confirm in the past one and a half years ...
recorded in a list, and you can see them for yourselves on the internet.
If it happens, will the oxygen masks that fall from the ceiling help,
given that they are always brought to our attention before takeoff?
Well, these oxygen masks are intended for a drop in pressure,
for example if aircraft skin is suddenly punctured.
They are not suitable for use against toxic exposures.
For that you need the masks that we just saw the pilots putting on in the film.
Those are full face masks that supply 100% oxygen.
The masks in the cabin supply a mixture or oxygen and cabin air,
meaning that I would breathe in the already contaminated cabin air. They won’t help.
If it has really been known for so long that there is this design flaw,
why doesn’t it get changed?
Well, that’s a good question. The problem has existed for 50 years. Here we see the DC-8,
an aircraft that was built this way in 1959, and on the front we can see the intakes very well.
Until the late 1950s this is how the air was brought in from outside.
Then the engineers hit on an idea and said ...
“we can take the air directly from the engine”.
However, at the time not much thought was given to any pollutants.
Remember, this was the same time that American soldiers were put in the desert ...
with sunglasses and allowed to watch a nuclear bomb explosion from a few miles away.
That was also not dangerous.
No awareness of the problem.
What is it like today? Are there new aircraft types that are better?
Yes, you’d probably have to say that the company Boeing has the lead.
At the moment their new Dreamliner is undergoing flight testing ...
and uses these types of air intakes again for the first time.
That means the air isn’t bled off the engine,
it comes from outside, compressed and directed into the cabin, as it was 50 years ago.
So it can be avoided. Thank you very much, Mr van Beveren.