“Does cabin air is safe…?”

After the COVID-19 pandemic, the aviation industry is getting ready to start its services with guidelines instructed by the respective government bodies. Passengers who are going to board their flights may have many questions which strike their mind. Here’s one of the major questions which every passenger has “Does cabin air is safe…?”

You might be surprised to learn that an aircraft is not sealed against the atmosphere outside. Cold, fresh mountain air at around -65 degrees from the upper atmosphere enters the plane through the engines (at the compressor stage), called ‘bleed air.’

The system then cools the air to remove the engine heat and pressurizes it to the same level in the cabin, before being mixed with recirculated existing cabin air.On average, cabin air is completely refreshed 20 times per hour, compared with just 12 times per hour in an office building. 

On most aircraft, air is also circulated through hospital-grade HEPA filters, which remove 99.97 percent of bacteria, as well as the airborne particles that viruses use for transport (many regional jets lack these filters). Additionally, cabins are divided into separate ventilation sections about every seven rows of seats, which means that you share air only with those in your immediate environment and not with the guy who’s coughing up a lung ten rows back. When the plane is on the ground, however, air circulation in the cabin can be greatly reduced.

The achy, icky feeling many fliers get after spending hours in the air usually has nothing to do with colds or flu and everything to do with the bone-dry, oxygen-thin atmosphere of the cabin. But new developments in aircraft manufacturing and air filtration promise to make flying more comfortable and to reduce even further the chance that you’ll catch something from a fellow passenger.

The next generation of planes will be built from composite materials—plastics reinforced with carbon fiber—offering relief not only from altitude sickness but also from the burning eyes and swollen nasal passages many fliers experience. Both the Boeing 787 Dreamliner and the Airbus A350, which will launch in a few years, will usher in a new era of comfort with more humidity and less pressure than current planes.

The latest development in cabin air quality is Air Manager, a new purification technology being tested by British aerospace giant BAE Systems. It uses a patented technology known as “non-thermal plasma” to eliminate not only germs and particles but also all the viruses, impurities, and foul odours that HEPA filters cannot

A final note that a study in 2015 has shown that some of the bleed air, if not properly filtered, can contain oil, de-icing fumes, or other chemicals from the engines. This is called a ‘fume event’ and is very rare and only dangerous to those who regularly fly, such as pilots and flight attendants. The science is still out if these fumes have long term effects.

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Subhash Surve,

Aerostat Aviation.

Source:

‘article by Barbara S. Peterson to CNBC news on 13 Jan 2010’,

‘article by Jim Reed and Adam Eley to BBC on 8 June 2015’,

‘article by Nicholas Cummins to simple flying on 21 may 2020’.