Stinky long haul flight allowed to continue
A report in The Sydney Morning Herald says that Qantas flight QF26 was climbing through 2438 metres on its way out of Los Angeles to Auckland on July 28 when the crew noticed a pungent odour on the flight deck.
The flight engineer’s eyes began watering and his breathing became laboured.
The smell was also on the upper deck and part of the lower deck of the passenger cabin.
The flight, on Saturday, July 28, continued to New Zealand, where the crew consulted a doctor and the flight engineer was put off work for a week.
The Sun-Herald has been told that Qantas put the same jet back into service and it flew the return trip to LA and when the original crew returned to work in Auckland they found the plane still in service with the same odour in the cockpit.
WorkCover NSW issued an improvement notice to Qantas Airways on August 15 and in a statement it said: “WorkCover is satisfied that the notice has been complied with.”
A Qantas spokesman declined to comment further on the incident.
This has set off alarm bells in the aviation industry with reports in New Zealand saying that senior pilots are worried crew and regular passengers could suffer serious long-term illnesses, unless the aviation industry owns up to a critical design flaw in planes.
One pilots’ association says the problem stems from a cost-cutting design in commercial planes, which take warm air from the engines and pump it straight into the cabin.
It causes problems if the engine has an oil leak, and contaminated air is then blown into the cabin.
The Qantas case has raised concerns about what would happen if both pilots were overcome by fumes at the same time.
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