Hacker News Reader

Comment by haecceity | Hacker News Reader

> An internal Boeing memo described it as a “risk” to give air sensors to even one airline, according to a deposition of a Boeing executive.

> “Flight attendant, pilot unions, and congressional supporters could use this effort as evidence that sensors are needed and ... to drive their agenda forward to have bleed air sensors required on all aircraft,” said the 2015 memo, which Boeing turned over in litigation.

> Boeing told The Times that it has not equipped its planes with air sensors because suppliers have not “demonstrated the existence” of devices that could “reliably detect contaminated bleed air.” The company said in a statement that scientific studies have not proved a link between fume events and health problems. “The cabin air inside Boeing airplanes is safe,” the company said.

Thanks Boeing

View on HN

At every turn, Boeing is making it very hard to not commit to flying AirBus.

JetBlue and Delta (soon) are all Airbus fleets if that helps.

Did you read the article? Airbus A319 is the headliner.

The irony is that Boeing are currently the only ones who produce an airliner with bleedless air (the 787); all Airbus jets still use bleed air.

That is indeed ironic, although in my defense all of my flights are going to be on 737/A320 sized aircraft. I can't remember the last time I flew on a wide bodied aircraft, and I'm not likely to do it again soon.

My issue is mostly that everything that comes out of Boeing makes me feel like they're more worried about suing them than them hurting me or killing me. Maybe Airbus isn't much better, but it sure seems hard for Boeing to get much worse.

Airbus are European, of course they have better safety standards and working culture than American companies ;-)

> Airbus are European, of course they have better safety standards and working culture than American companies ;-)

Substantiate your stereotyping.

I'm not saying it is or isn't true, I'm saying that such broad stereotyping without reasoning comes off as bias.

The winking smiley should give you a clue to say I’m being deliberately provocative... I think the company culture is probably more important than any regulatory practices or geographical locations.

Several examples of fume events in the article are from Airbus planes as well, especially Jet Blue ones. I suspect because Boeing is closer to home, the journalists have more insider insight as to the internal decisions to not do anything at Boeing, thus putting them in an even more negative light. I would guess Airbus is just as bad. The actual airlines seem to be neglegent as well, fighting to not pay workers comp.

All airliners (except the 787) use the same technology when it comes to air supply. They even buy the equipment from the same suppliers (engines, heat exchanger, ozone converter, packs…).

The risk of fumes is exactly the same on all brands (again, except the 787).

That’s not true. The actual design of the bleed system matters a lot, as does the recommendations for seal maintenance.

The fumes come from the engine, there's nothing the bleed system can do to mitigate that. All bleed components already don't use any lubricant, they don't add any fume. Also all bleed systems across the whole industry have an extremely similar architecture.

So in the end the component that really matters for this is the engine. And both Airbus and Boeing use very similar engines from the same suppliers. And the engine manufacturer defines the maintenance tasks for it.

As I said in another comment; I don’t want to put Airbus on a pedestal here, but the internal emails from Boeing are incredibly damning towards the company culture. Painting people concerned about breathing in fumes as having an “agenda” is a perfect stereotype of corporate malice, it’s almost beyond parody.

I’ve never seen such emails out of Airbus, although it’s entirely possible that that’s because they’re in another language and therefore they haven’t made it to the English only media I consume.

Seems like they are intentionally asking for regulation, saying they have absolutely no consensus mechanism to do what is necessary until Congress forces them to

They are already regulated but apparently this is most likely a major and intentional oversight. Why? My best guess as to why you can't have a separate air intake from bleed air is that you need the pressurization and the heat. And the extra weight of a different system is cost prohibitive and maybe less reliable. I would hope you could have a primary system that was all electric and taken from a safer bleed or entire system and then use the secondary bleed air system.

I’m referring to the regulations requiring them to detect bad air with a sensor, not an actual solution. Just more data for now, they seem to be asking for that.

> why you can't have a separate air intake from bleed air

You can, the 787 does it, but it has significant drawbacks as well. Also it basically can't be retrofitted onto an existing aircraft series.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com