An air passengers has slammed plane air after taking a portable CO2 metre aboard and claiming it showed cabins are full of a “CO2 Covid soup”.
The passenger, who tweeted with the handle Ripeka123, took the carbon dioxide reader aboard an Air New Zealand flight on Monday travelling between Christchurch, in New Zealand’s South Island, to Wellington, in the North Island.
The reading, taken aboard the flight halfway into the 55-minute journey, clocked 1900 parts per million of exhaled CO2.
This was close to being twice the safe ventilation outlined by New Zealand’s public health measure, with Building Research Association of New Zealand or BRANZ recommending ventilation in an indoor area is sufficient to keep CO2 levels below 1,000ppm.
The CO2 metre also recorded 37 per cent humidity, making it likely passengers were also spending the journey breathing other passengers’ breath in.
“If @FlyAirNZ are suffering because of staff sickness, might I respectfully point out that flying us all around in a C02 covid soup is probs a contributing factor that you CAN do something about!” tweeted Ripeka123.
“This was chch to wellington 1/2 way into the flight.”
It comes as the New Zealand Herald has reported Air New Zealand staff are being asked to pull extra hours and volunteer time during school holidays amid "higher than usual employee sickness".
"To help alleviate some of the pressure on our frontline teams we put a call out for volunteers to help in our busy airports,” read a message sent to staff.
Portable Carbon Dioxide readers have been used throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, often in public places like schools, to determine the appropriate ventilation of an area to minimise the chance of infection spreading via moisture droplets in the air.
A Twitter user pointed out that air con systems cause “elevated” CO2 levels, but noted that 1900 still seemed particularly high.
“The aircraft aircon system means elevated CO2 doesn’t correlate directly to pathogen levels,” wrote justadiver1999.
“Only 50-60 per cent is fresh air, 40 to 50 per cent of the air is recirculated thru filters that should remove pathogens but don’t scrub out CO2, so elevated CO2 is to be expected- 1900 seems high though.”
Ripeka123 responded saying she was “expecting elevated reading for that reason” but that the number had still surprised her.
"Covid aside, it's not ok to be in such high concentrations of C02 for extended periods of time,” she added.
Early on in the pandemic the International Air Transport Association (IATA) made a statement about the risk of Covid transmission for air passengers, which they said was “very low”.
Ventilation recycled in most air cabins was cleaned to a hospital grade thanks to HEPA (High-efficiency Particulate Air) filters, the association said in August 2020.
However, not all planes were equipped with these systems.
Air New Zealand's regional link aircraft like the ATR turboprops did not have HEPA filters as standard.
A spokesperson for Air New Zealand told the New Zealand Herald that the air inside their ATR aircraft was of a safe standard and better than most other enclosed spaces.
"The ventilation system in the ATR aircraft is designed and certified to meet safe passenger airflow and ventilation requirements,” the statement read.
“The air in the cabin is fully renewed with external fresh air every five to seven minutes, and air travels from the ceiling to the floor, which reduces the risk of air moving between seat rows – making the quality of air in the cabin environment much better than most indoor environments."
