HN Reader

A lot of people think planes are this sealed tube in the air. Nope, they use compressor stages of the engines to pressurize the cabins. This kind of thing can happen. They should have been able to close off the effected engine from pressurizing the cabin and the other should have been able to clear the air quickly, unless the was another failure too.

I've been on some where you can smell the jet fuel (kerosene) when they start the engine because they forgot to close off the cabin. They said it was normal and "harmless". It was probably harmless for me, considering the infrequent flights I take, but not to cabin crew.

I refuse to fly. 75% of the time I've flown, I've smelled the diesel fuel-like odor of Jet A in the cabin at startup. It's way too normalized.

Also, like astronauts, flight crew receive significant cumulative ionizing radiation exposure.

I advise always tightly wearing a "3M Particulate Respirator 8577, P95, NIOSH APPROVED, with Nuisance Level Organic Vapor Relief" mask while in flight. An N95 won't do it, and a P95 without the carbon layer won't do it either.

Even then, obviously it won't help with carbon monoxide. Only the oxygen mask could. I would stick to Boeing planes for now to lower the risk since it's greater in Airbus planes.

Note that a standard pulse oximeter could continue to falsely show good oxygenation when having carbon monoxide poisoning, so do not trust it then if it shows a high value.

Another name for this is Toxic Air Syndrome

Looks like WSJ finally killed archive.is.

Anyone have any alternatives?

Airbus A350, Airbus A220(ex Bombardier C-Series), Boeing 787, Embraer E-Jet E2 Series, don't use it. Maybe future models of ATR-72(or descendants) won't.