Planes and spread of germs

[fumsm]

People need to stop kidding their selves. I have flown millions of miles, literally. 25 Years worth. Without doubt, I have contacted more flu's and colds etc from planes than anywhere else. The airplanes typically recirculate the air within the cabin, even though they can do otherwise. No one has ever given me a good answer as to why. It may be due to the need to heat the outside air coming in, which is quite cold at 25,000 feet, and the energy to produce the heat. At least that was one rumor.

In the last few years, my air travel has diminished. So has the frequency of flu, colds etc.

Although Biden shouldn't have said we he said, he is right.

[ananda]

1. Planes and enclosed areas are incubators!

Biden was right, and since he was right,
he should have said what he said.

People need good information.

[maseman]

16. Not really

A public bus or train is more of an incubator than an airplane. Fresh air is constantly being injected into the cabin in an airplane. Yes 50% or so is recycled but with fresh air coming on it is something like every few minutes it is 100% new compared to two minutes before.

Walk into a stuffy bar and spend an hour it will be much worse than an airplane.

[islandmkl]

2. it was very noticeable, but not remarkable, that the M$M all 'commented' on Joe's remarks...

and how they could 'damage the travel industry'...as opposed to commenting on how the airlines, etc. could aid public health for their travelers by not circulating 'foul' air...

it's always refreshing :sarcasm: to see the truth sliced and diced because of the delivery of the message...

[Atman]

3. When I flew over the North Pole to Hong Kong, it was -65F at 37,000 feet

By the time we got to Hong Kong from JFK -- 15 hours -- it was freakin' FREEZING inside that plane. Same on the way home. The theory about heating the outside air makes a lot of sense, then. It was a big-ass plane to have to heat. Amazingly, I didn't get sick on either long-haul flight. But the last time I flew to Florida, returned with a plane-load of Disney tourist kid families, I was sick as a dog within 48 hours.

.

[flyarm]

4. reason ..saves fuel..you want cheaper seats, you get less clean air!

[John Q. Citizen]

9. How much oxegen does air at 35,000 ft contain? Is it suitable to breathe besides the temperature?

How do they vent all the moisture in a big cabin?

Can't they heat the cabin with heat exchangers from the jet engines?

Thanks

[FarCenter]

11. The same proportion of oxygen to nitrogen as at 5000 feet

But they have to compress the air to keep equivalent of 5000 feet air pressure. And heat it, and add humidity.

[benld74]

5. They DO NOT wish to start a PUBLIC PANIC,,,

this is in the same vein as W telling all after 9/11 to go shopping, don't let them stop you from doing what you usually do.
BUT in less than a week, this flu has gone from being identified in onyl 2 states to be in over a dozen states!
BIDEN is RIGHT. The question the so called Journalists need to be asking ALL of the higher ups, including the CDC, is, Would you want your family to go to these places you are saying are safe?

[malaise]

6. 100% correct

Any confined space is the easiest way to be exposed to viruses and of all of them, planes are the worst.
Cinemas,enclosed malls and sports centers are pretty bad as well.
One of my sisters used to take her boys to fair grounds when they were young and soon discovered that they picked up stuff way more often when they were exposed to all those rides.

[HereSince1628]

7. Airplanes have much more sophisticated air-handling than buses and subway cars

I was involved in the mid 1990's on a study on TB transmission and at that time the airlines took air-quality more seriously than did metro transit companies. Consequently, visiting New York and riding the subways always gives me the heeby-geebies.

[babylonsister]

8. Outside air is circulated on aircraft, about 80% of it.

Plus hepa filters are used to aid in keeping the air clean.

My DH is a mgr of maintenance for aircraft, and that's the word.

Having said that, I agree, because of the small tube filled with people rocketing through the sky, I have on occasion gotten sick and do blame it on the ride and germs.

My dad has gotten very sick on planes-bronchitis-to the point where he flies rarely. He's in his 80s so it's a concern.

[sinkingfeeling]

10. Of course he was right. My son manages a restaurant and picks up everything that goes around.

I'm a home-body and rarely catch anything.

[FarCenter]

12. Humans evolved to live at densities of probably less than 10 per square mile

[babylonsister]

13. Cabin Air Systems...

http://www.boeing.com/commercial/cabinair/index.html

Cabin Air Systems

The cabin air system in today's jetliners is designed to provide a safe, comfortable cabin environment at cruising altitudes that can reach upwards of 40,000 feet.

At those altitudes, the cabin must be pressurized to enable passengers and crew to breathe normally. By government regulation, the cabin pressure cannot be less than the equivalent of outside air pressure at 8,000 feet.

Here's briefly how the system works:
Cabin Air System Operation

Pressurized air for the cabin comes from the compressor stages in the aircraft's jet engines. Moving through the compressor, the outside air gets very hot as it becomes pressurized. The portion drawn off for the passenger cabin is first cooled by heat exchangers in the engine struts and then, after flowing through ducting in the wing, is further cooled by the main air conditioning units.

The cooled air then flows to a chamber where it is mixed with an approximately equal amount of highly filtered air from the passenger cabin. The combined outside and filtered air is ducted to the cabin and distributed through overhead outlets.

Inside the cabin, the air flows in a circular pattern and exits through floor grilles on either side of the cabin or, on some airplanes, through overhead intakes. The exiting air goes below the cabin floor into the lower lobe of the fuselage. The airflow is continuous and is used for maintaining a comfortable cabin temperature. About half of the air exiting the cabin is exhausted from the airplane through an outflow valve in the lower lobe, which also controls the cabin pressure. The other half is drawn by fans through special filters under the cabin floor, and then is mixed with the outside air coming in from the engine compressors.

These high efficiency filters have similar performance to those filters used to keep the air clean in hospitals. Such filters are very effective at trapping microscopic particles such as bacteria and viruses.

Key Characteristics and Overall Effectiveness

There are several characteristics of the cabin air system that deserve special emphasis:

* Air circulation is continuous. Air is always flowing into and out of the cabin.

* Outside-air mixing replenishes the cabin air constantly. The outside-air content keeps carbon dioxide and other contaminants well within standard limits and replaces oxygen far faster than the rate at which it is consumed.

There are multiple factors associated with the aircraft cabin environment that can influence comfort. Symptoms occasionally reported by passengers and crew, including headache and fatigue, can be caused by complex interactions of factors including the individual's health, jet lag, medications, alcohol consumption and motion sickness in combination with factors such as cabin altitude effects and low humidity. Boeing supports industry efforts to develop a better understanding of how these factors interact

Differences Between Older and Newer Cabin Air Systems

Engines that produced all or most of their thrust directly from the engine core powered early-generation jetliners. Air extracted from the compressor in these older aircraft provided the cabin with 100 percent outside air with only a modest impact on fuel economy. But by today's standards, the engines themselves were very noisy, emitted much higher levels of pollutants into the atmosphere and were much less fuel-efficient.

By contrast, most newer jetliners are powered by high-bypass-ratio fan engines which are much quieter, much cleaner burning, more powerful and much more efficient. At the front end of this engine type is a large-diameter fan, which is powered by the core. The fan moves a large volume of air past the core rather than through it, and actually generates most of the thrust. Every unit of pressurized air extracted from the engine core has the effect of reducing fan thrust by an even greater amount, and that degrades fuel efficiency more severely on this type of engine than on the older type. By providing the cabin with a mixture of about 50 percent outside air taken from the compressor and 50 percent recirculated air, a balance has been achieved that maintains a high level of cabin air quality, good fuel efficiency and less impact to our environment.

However, that's only part of the rationale for the current design of cabin air systems. Cabin air is typically quite dry at cruise altitudes. With 50 percent recirculation, the cabin is provided with at least a modest level of humidity in newer jetliners compared to the very low levels in earlier models.

[uppityperson]

14. Thank you, I'd wondered how they did it. nt

[applegrove]

15. I thought what Biden said was common knowledge. Haven't there been

news stories about viruses you can get by flying on international flights for years? I think the problem for Biden was he seemed to be panicking people. And they don't want that.