A recently reported study on airplane air quality found that half of the airplane crews surveyed had received complaints on the cabin air from passengers. Flight attendants complain, too. Boeing is involved in a lawsuit with Alaska Airlines attendants, who say the air in MD-80 jets built by Boeing merger partner McDonnell Douglas made them sick. The governments of Australia and the United Kingdome have commissioned studies on airplane air quality, and in the United States, the National Academy of Science held a symposium on the topic in January. And it's a puzzling one.
Flight attendants have symptoms.
Passengers have symptoms. Diana Fairechild, a former flight attendant who now campaigns on aircraft air quality issues, said the problem lies in the fact that Boeing and Airbus build planes that recycle half the air inside the passenger cabin. That air is full of germs and lacking in oxygen, she says. But Johnson and Space say that's not so. Filters remove more than 99 percent of the microbes in the passenger cabin air, they say.