Passengers couldn’t take the stench on a long flight, and it’s apparently someone’s seatmate that was causing the problem.
I need help understanding air filtration in airplanes. Someone apparently kept farting during the entire 5 hour flight, and everyone was suffering the whole time. The hostess started spraying Febreze and handing out masks because of it.
On passenger on a 5-hour flight “had insane gas every 15–20 min for [the] ENTIRE 5 hour flight,” and “the entire plane was gagging.” A flight attendant started spraying Febreze and handing out masks.
The woman taking video reiterates that this went on for the whole flight, and insists that because “the air being recirculated is a myth its bled in from the engines,” and if the smell never went away, then person “was farting on the regular.” In other words, they were refreshing the smell. Although I remember from men I was young, “he who smelt it dealt it” so maybe they were actually the perpetrator?
“New gorilla tactic to get people to mask again?”
“The hep filters prevent disease not farts or something like that.”
“Most have HEPA level filtration now but no charcoal for smells. There are no germs but it does stink.”
In fact, cabin air is usually about 50% fresh outside air (bled off the engines or compressed electrically) and 50% recirculated air that’s sent through HEPA filters. The total cabin air is typically completely renewed every 2 – 3 minutes (20–30 air changes per hour) at cruise.
Airflow is mostly top-to-bottom, not a big front-to-back breeze. That limits how far particles normally spread along the cabin.
However, while HEPA filters are excellent at removing particles (droplets, aerosols, dust, bacteria, and many virus-carrying droplets — typically 99.97% of particles), they do not remove most gaseous molecules, including many odor compounds. So it’s totally plausible that you can have:
- Good infectious-disease control (HEPA doing its job),
- Terrible smell when someone is venting sulfurous gas every few minutes, because the smell molecules sail right past the HEPA.
- Although some aircraft do have odor adsorber cartridges (carbon or similar) in parts of the system.
So given how fast cabin air is turned over, a smell that’s constant for 5 hours points mainly to continuous or repeated emissions in that part of the cabin. The ventilation will dilute each “event” in a few minutes, but if you keep re-seeding the air every 15 – 20 minutes, people near you are going to feel like it never ends.
Flatulence from goats once caused a Singapore Airlines aircraft to make an emergency landing. (Hot cows caused a similar issue for a 747 near Heathrow.) And a passenger’s gastrointestinal issues caused a British Airways flight to turn around and go back to London. And there’s the famous Delta diarrhea flight.
Someone had diarrhea on a delta flight from atlanta to Barcelona forcing the plane to land early #deltaflight #diarrhea pic.twitter.com/I8iFn542Yy
— Ding News (@DingNewsCorp) September 6, 2023
Usually things don’t reach the point where an aircraft has to declare an emergency, but passing gas on a plane is something that happens on most every flight, every day, because changes in air pressure cause the body to produce more gas.
- An average person does this 10 times a day anyway. Now multiply that out across a full widebody on a long haul flight and that’s without factoring in changes in altitude.
- The cause of the odor is sulfur
- The problem inflight is worse in cabins with leather seats (which traditionally meant first class). Most fabric seat covers are more absorbent.
Beans may be good for your heart, but you shouldn’t eat them before flying or on a plane. Avoid fried foods, cabbage, broccoli and brussels sprouts.
At Washington National airport, don’t do this:
Consider taking gas-x or beano if you’re especially prone to the issue. You can excuse yourself to the lavatory, but there’s often a wait especially in economy — this is to make your fellow passengers feel less awkward about the situation. The flipside though is if your seat mate passes gas, try to ignore it, it’s too easy for tensions to escalate in a plane as it is and there’s really nowhere to go to extricate yourself from an uncomfortable situation.
if the air is refreshed every couple minutes from outside, how does the cabin contain enough oxygen at 30K ft ?
“gaseous molecules” also know as feces.
@Ren, the proportion of O2 in the air at 30K is approximately the same as sea level (21%), but since the air density is much less at altitude (4.3psia vs. 14.7psia on average), the partial pressure of O2 is too low to provide sufficient O2 for human survival. By pressurizing it, you are increasing the pressure while not changing the proportion of gases, so you are increasing the partial pressure of O2. Hope that answers your question.
Someone had something wrong going on. Usually when someone has gas like that it means they need to hit the bathroom and let something besides just gas out.
At least that is my medical tip of the day 🙂
The percentage oxygen in air at 30,000 feet is about what it is at sea level, 21%. The air pressure is a lot less so a breath takes in a lot fewer oxygen molecules. That is why most would have fatal altitude sickness breathing air at 30,000 feet. If the air at 30,000 feet is pressurized to almost the pressure at sea level, it will be relatively indistinguishable from air at sea level. The air in passenger airplanes is pressurized to around 8,000 feet in some and around 6,000 feet in others so a breath is taking in less oxygen than at sea level but still enough to not have altitude sickness problems.
Bean, beans… the magical fruit…
If folks are gonna load-up on perfumes and cologne, then I see no reason why eating spicy food beforehand, then rippin’ em, either ‘loud n proud’ or ‘silent but deadly,’ isn’t fair game, too. With the soothing sounds of the engines and the cushions as your muffler, probably wouldn’t even be audible anyway. While we’re at it, belching is within reason as well. All that said, I’d still like an expert opinion. @Ken A, what say ye?
And, I wanna be clear, anyone who this this is just jokin’-around, better wise-up, fast. We mean business here. This is the real deal. Boyle’s law. Dawg. Resident intellectual scholars, like @Mike Hunt (say his name!) should agree. Thank you for your attention to this matter. @Gene, do you think toots in First are a-okay? WFBF. Want Farts. Be Farts. THANK. YOU. FOR. YOUR. ATTENTION. TO. THIS. MATTER.
@Ren: because that air is brought in, heated by the engines and pressurized to the equivalent of being at about 8,000′ above sea level (closer to 6,000 ASL on 787s and A350s). Same air but compressed a bit.
And yet United loves to serve cabbage and broccoli and beans on flights. I could never understand that!
There’s a Ben’s Chili at IAD now too, perhaps for the best I haven’t seen long lines
@1990 — Such a “meta” comment!
@L737 — VFTW (and all these blogs) are the most serious of places. How dare anyone comment more than once. And if you aren’t a certified expert in flatulence, you’ll be hearing from Gary’s lawyers… harrumph!!
If one person is getting the blame, others could be releasing too instead of holding it in.
@1990 — “Deciphering [how this blog works] is critical! I’ll be in my Chamber of Understanding”
@jns — Yikes, domino effect
@L737 — *cone lowers* *bass*
@jns — Are you suggesting that ‘he who smelt it, dealt it’?!
Just smear some vics vapo rub under your nose. Few people, to my knowledge, are taught how to mitigate their exposure to fecal odors at a young age. The most people can manage is a screwed-up face and a shriek of “What’s that smell/what stinks/who flatulated” Be prepared, people.
@1990: One symptom of COVID-19, long-COVID and flu infections is anosmia which is a partial or compete loss of smell. Depending on the distance of your aircraft seat to a flatulent passenger or flight attendant, anosmia could be a benefit for airline passengers.
Maybe that passenger seat should be tapped and have the gasses sent to the engines. This could increase fuel efficiency.
Reading this post reminded me of the time I hung out with some frat-friends in college. Apparently they had a regular “fart-off” competition, and holy moly. I swear I’ve seen some of these guys in YouTube & Instagram videos showing off how good they fart.
Anyway – when my stomach isn’t agreeing with me and I gotta let it out, I will hold in what I can until I make it to the lav, let’er rip, and hope the toilet is a suction-based system where it then sucks all the air out of the lav (and hopefully smell) so it doesn’t follow me out. The old 737 sinks used to have a vacuum in them as well and that helped keep the odor at bay.
I was on a Condor flight once, and I swear the person across the aisle from me was sounding off like a trumpet every 20 minutes… it was bad. Yet people were looking at ME thinking I was farting…. ugh.
At least during Rona we *could* fart at our seats and hope no one smelled it.
If beans or other foods make you gassy, you’re not eating them enough. Further, regular exercise helps prevent the problem. Not a physician.
There should be some way of placing a rectal tube and diverting the methane to the engines. This will reduce the use of jet fuel, the carbon footprint, and help save the planet from global warming and spare the odor from the cabin. I’m working on the patent as we speak. I could use some help from the public with branding and naming this cutting edge technology.
The true cause of global warming
Just look for the passenger that boarded looking like a 300 pounder, and deplaned looking 175….
I am reluctantly going to agree with 1990 on this… I sounds a lot like a you-tube/TikTok prank with home made stink bombs being released. These tiktokers are dumb enough to try anything for attention.
A diet of 100% brussel sprouts and white beans, for a solid 3 days before a flight, after fasting for 3 days, assures a degree of comfort hitherto unknown by the human species.