4 ms·

> These incidents are literally called "fume events" Your first FAA link says that these 'fume events' are rare: "The report found that the rate of cabin air q

> These incidents are literally called "fume events" Your first FAA link says that these 'fume events' are rare: "The report found that the rate of cabin air quality events is less than 33 events per million aircraft departures." This is about one event every 30,000 flights.

4d4m 1mo ago
https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/study-shows-toxic-air-events-happening-on-more-flights-than-faa-reports/ https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/study-shows-toxic-... If you think of the last 10 flights you were on, how many had the gym sock smell? That's the real occurence rate. I'd say in my experience across all airlines its around 7/10 flights I can detect via smell a fume event.
- raverbashing 1mo ago
  Of the last 50 flights I took, none had gym sock smell. If anything smelled it's usually due to a passenger. But nothing from the aircraft itself
  - 4d4m 1mo ago
    We're not talking about stinky passengers, those are normal, expected smells :) Politely, I don't believe you haven't noticed the smell - this statistically is impossible when at an airport with multiple planes. You can smell it daily, at any airport terminal of your choosing, impossible to ignore when closer to the gates. It's a smell powerful enough to not get eaten by the various encapulation, ozone generators, and air fresheners used in public commerical environments like airports. The smell comes through from the planes and gangways into the terminal itself. Next trip: With a clear nose, smell the air at the airport entrance and then compare this with the smell closer to your gate. The contaminated airs smell it's very similar to a wet locker room or gym bag that was left for days without cleaning. You won't ever miss it again, and your stat will flip to detected in 50 out 50 visits.
    - raverbashing 1mo ago
      I assure you I'm very sensitive to smells and I haven't smelled anything like that in a plane
- deleted 1mo ago
  [deleted]
- ch4s3 1mo ago
  I’ve never noticed this in 35 years and I have an unusually sensitive sense of smell.
  - wiredfool 1mo ago
    I don’t think I’ve noticed gym socks smells, but I can certainly smell kerosene basically every time when outdoors at the airport, and often in the plane.
    - mrguyorama 1mo ago
      This is because it's an airport and there are tens of thousands of gallons of kerosene around, including several gallons per minute per running jet engine actively burning and turning into combustion products. Even in a perfectly working bleed air system, the air comes from outside the plane, which on the tarmac of an airport, is god awful, shitty, and not at all healthy. Lot's of other commenters talking about how the smell goes away at altitude. Because it doesn't come from the packs (except in fume events), and what people are usually smelling is that airports have very bad air, and that air is much cleaner at 30k feet. The miniscule oil vapor/droplets that are making their way into the bleed air system from engine compressor seals will still happen at 30k feet. If you don't smell something at all times on a plane, it cannot be coming from that. This level of contamination would be like working at a gas station, which can be a health hazard. OSHA regulates air quality for employees working around hydrocarbons.
  - petesergeant 1mo ago
    43 years for me, and in addition to being notably smell-sensitive, I’ve also taken a probably close to 500 long haul flights
- amluto 1mo ago
  In my experience, a large fraction of flights have very stinky air during a substantial portion of the time from when the engines start until takeoff. Whether this is “gym sock” or something else has never been entirely clear to me.
  - Der_Einzige 1mo ago
    I think airplanes reek too, but mostly because the cleaning done on the seats/cabin is pathetic by overworked and underpaid cabin crew, the average American doesn't wash their asshole (no bidet culture in the USA) so they have smeared shit stains on most of their undergarments, standard BO, etc Coincidentally, when I am flying anywhere in Asia, I get none of this. I'd unironically rather be on an Indian airline for most flights because for all the flack that Indian people get about cleanliness, they're far more likely than the average gringo to have used a bidet at some point in their lives.
- jerlam 1mo ago
  There is one specific plane type (Airbus A320) that has significantly more fume events than all other plane types, suggesting that plane type or associated engine has a design or procedural flaw. Since airlines consolidate on specific types, it is possible that some travelers experience this problem often and others very rarely. Through no choice of my own, I seem to only fly on Boeing 737s, but the one recent time I was on an Airbus (A321neo) there was a distinct exhaust odor upon engine startup.
wewtyflakes 1mo ago
That sounds awful; it means 3+ times a day a whole plane of a passengers is getting sprayed with this stuff.
NegativeLatency 1mo ago
I have a pretty sensitive sense of smell, and I regularly smell oil/smoke/hydrocarbon smell after they're starting the engines. It also sticks on your clothes after the plane ride, and I'm quite sure it's not just stinky seat smell.
- triceratops 1mo ago
  I don't have a sensitive sense of smell and I still smell it.
  - giov4 1mo ago
    I also don't have a pretty sensitive smell and I smelled it a lot, especially cherosene like while boarding and before or during taxing, but later gets better. it happened to me only on certain planes or cheaper airlines and i never managed to correlate it enough to plane, situation or airline. the smell is very pungent and scratches the throats, typical fulel /exhaust like. I learned about the air system passing through the motor because of the safety incident case, where the safety for engine malfunctioned and junctioned high temperature engine oil into the air system when triggered, causing cabin and pilot problems breathing and visibility. does anybody know which conditions usually trigger this fuel like smell and perhaps which engine models are more prone to such condition? the fact that it goes away when flying let me me think something related to systems used when on ground
    - mrguyorama 1mo ago
      The conditions that trigger the "Fuel like smell" of kerosene is that you are in a place where thousands of gallons of actual kerosene are handled, moved, spilled, and burned every day. The air quality at an airport is horrific, in general, and as long as the plane is on the ground, it will be moving that air into the cabin. People notice it because you go from highly filtered, airport air, to unfiltered air on the jetway, to possibly filtered (depending on specifics) air from the ground equipment, to bleed pack air. It goes away when you are flying because the air quality 4000 feet above the airport is so much better. The oil seals in a jet engine are not magically perfect, and so there is absolutely some miniscule amount getting into bleed air. But bleed air comes out from the compressor section, before any fuel can be there, and modern jet engines are exceptionally good one way valves (compressor stall is the term for when they aren't). Engine oil consumption is also monitored for every single flight, but not to that level of precision. If the smell goes away in the air, it cannot be related to small amounts of oil vapor coming from the engine compressor section. Because that would still be present at 30k feet.
zeroc8 1mo ago
There are more than 100,000 flights per day. So not that rare at all.

4d4m 1mo ago

https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/study-shows-toxic-air-events-happening-on-more-flights-than-faa-reports/ https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/study-shows-toxic-... If you think of the last 10 flights you were on, how many had the gym sock smell? That's the real occurence rate. I'd say in my experience across all airlines its around 7/10 flights I can detect via smell a fume event.

raverbashing 1mo ago
Of the last 50 flights I took, none had gym sock smell. If anything smelled it's usually due to a passenger. But nothing from the aircraft itself
- 4d4m 1mo ago
  We're not talking about stinky passengers, those are normal, expected smells :) Politely, I don't believe you haven't noticed the smell - this statistically is impossible when at an airport with multiple planes. You can smell it daily, at any airport terminal of your choosing, impossible to ignore when closer to the gates. It's a smell powerful enough to not get eaten by the various encapulation, ozone generators, and air fresheners used in public commerical environments like airports. The smell comes through from the planes and gangways into the terminal itself. Next trip: With a clear nose, smell the air at the airport entrance and then compare this with the smell closer to your gate. The contaminated airs smell it's very similar to a wet locker room or gym bag that was left for days without cleaning. You won't ever miss it again, and your stat will flip to detected in 50 out 50 visits.
  - raverbashing 1mo ago
    I assure you I'm very sensitive to smells and I haven't smelled anything like that in a plane
deleted 1mo ago
[deleted]
ch4s3 1mo ago
I’ve never noticed this in 35 years and I have an unusually sensitive sense of smell.
- wiredfool 1mo ago
  I don’t think I’ve noticed gym socks smells, but I can certainly smell kerosene basically every time when outdoors at the airport, and often in the plane.
  - mrguyorama 1mo ago
    This is because it's an airport and there are tens of thousands of gallons of kerosene around, including several gallons per minute per running jet engine actively burning and turning into combustion products. Even in a perfectly working bleed air system, the air comes from outside the plane, which on the tarmac of an airport, is god awful, shitty, and not at all healthy. Lot's of other commenters talking about how the smell goes away at altitude. Because it doesn't come from the packs (except in fume events), and what people are usually smelling is that airports have very bad air, and that air is much cleaner at 30k feet. The miniscule oil vapor/droplets that are making their way into the bleed air system from engine compressor seals will still happen at 30k feet. If you don't smell something at all times on a plane, it cannot be coming from that. This level of contamination would be like working at a gas station, which can be a health hazard. OSHA regulates air quality for employees working around hydrocarbons.
- petesergeant 1mo ago
  43 years for me, and in addition to being notably smell-sensitive, I’ve also taken a probably close to 500 long haul flights
amluto 1mo ago
In my experience, a large fraction of flights have very stinky air during a substantial portion of the time from when the engines start until takeoff. Whether this is “gym sock” or something else has never been entirely clear to me.
- Der_Einzige 1mo ago
  I think airplanes reek too, but mostly because the cleaning done on the seats/cabin is pathetic by overworked and underpaid cabin crew, the average American doesn't wash their asshole (no bidet culture in the USA) so they have smeared shit stains on most of their undergarments, standard BO, etc Coincidentally, when I am flying anywhere in Asia, I get none of this. I'd unironically rather be on an Indian airline for most flights because for all the flack that Indian people get about cleanliness, they're far more likely than the average gringo to have used a bidet at some point in their lives.
jerlam 1mo ago
There is one specific plane type (Airbus A320) that has significantly more fume events than all other plane types, suggesting that plane type or associated engine has a design or procedural flaw. Since airlines consolidate on specific types, it is possible that some travelers experience this problem often and others very rarely. Through no choice of my own, I seem to only fly on Boeing 737s, but the one recent time I was on an Airbus (A321neo) there was a distinct exhaust odor upon engine startup.

wewtyflakes 1mo ago

That sounds awful; it means 3+ times a day a whole plane of a passengers is getting sprayed with this stuff.

NegativeLatency 1mo ago

I have a pretty sensitive sense of smell, and I regularly smell oil/smoke/hydrocarbon smell after they're starting the engines. It also sticks on your clothes after the plane ride, and I'm quite sure it's not just stinky seat smell.

triceratops 1mo ago
I don't have a sensitive sense of smell and I still smell it.
- giov4 1mo ago
  I also don't have a pretty sensitive smell and I smelled it a lot, especially cherosene like while boarding and before or during taxing, but later gets better. it happened to me only on certain planes or cheaper airlines and i never managed to correlate it enough to plane, situation or airline. the smell is very pungent and scratches the throats, typical fulel /exhaust like. I learned about the air system passing through the motor because of the safety incident case, where the safety for engine malfunctioned and junctioned high temperature engine oil into the air system when triggered, causing cabin and pilot problems breathing and visibility. does anybody know which conditions usually trigger this fuel like smell and perhaps which engine models are more prone to such condition? the fact that it goes away when flying let me me think something related to systems used when on ground
  - mrguyorama 1mo ago
    The conditions that trigger the "Fuel like smell" of kerosene is that you are in a place where thousands of gallons of actual kerosene are handled, moved, spilled, and burned every day. The air quality at an airport is horrific, in general, and as long as the plane is on the ground, it will be moving that air into the cabin. People notice it because you go from highly filtered, airport air, to unfiltered air on the jetway, to possibly filtered (depending on specifics) air from the ground equipment, to bleed pack air. It goes away when you are flying because the air quality 4000 feet above the airport is so much better. The oil seals in a jet engine are not magically perfect, and so there is absolutely some miniscule amount getting into bleed air. But bleed air comes out from the compressor section, before any fuel can be there, and modern jet engines are exceptionally good one way valves (compressor stall is the term for when they aren't). Engine oil consumption is also monitored for every single flight, but not to that level of precision. If the smell goes away in the air, it cannot be related to small amounts of oil vapor coming from the engine compressor section. Because that would still be present at 30k feet.

zeroc8 1mo ago

There are more than 100,000 flights per day. So not that rare at all.