FORT WORTH- An American Airlines (AA) Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner carrying as many as 284 passengers made an emergency landing in Dublin (DUB) on Saturday afternoon after 6 of the eight flight attendants working the service reported feeling ill.
The widebody was operating flight AA719 from Rome Fiumicino (FCO) to Philadelphia (PHL) when the pilots declared a medical emergency roughly three hours into the transatlantic crossing.
American Airlines 787 Diverts to Dublin
Flight AA719 departed Rome Fiumicino just before 1 PM local time on July 25 for what should have been a routine flight of about eight and a half hours to American Airlines’ Philadelphia hub.
Data from the flight tracking website Flightradar24 shows the 7-year-old aircraft climbed to a cruising altitude of around 38,000 feet as it tracked over France and out over the Atlantic Ocean. About 3 hours into the flight, the pilots suddenly turned the jet towards Ireland.
The reason given to air traffic control for the sudden diversion was a medical emergency. The exact details of what kind of medical episode was taking place on board were not immediately revealed.
Sources cited by trusted aviation insider JonNYC on X reported that six of the flight attendants started to feel dizzy and ill as the plane flew over the Atlantic. JonNYC stressed that the account was completely unconfirmed, repeating that caveat both before and after the claim.
The post, published at 1:54 AM on July 26, referred to six of nine flight attendants feeling dizzy or ill. That figure differs from the 8 strong cabin crew complement otherwise reported for the flight.
None of the crew members are believed to have been incapacitated. Even so, the pilots decided that the flight could not continue with so many flight attendants feeling ill at the same time.
Onward Flight Cancelled in Dublin
The plane landed safely in Dublin on Saturday afternoon. As PYOK reported, American Airlines had no replacement crew available to take the passengers on to Philadelphia, and with the cause of the illness among the flight attendants still a mystery, the carrier had no other option but to cancel the onward flight.
Why Fume Event Is Least Likely Cause
Several potential causes could explain the sudden mass sickness among the flight attendants. A so-called toxic fume event, which the airline industry prefers to call an odor event, is the least likely of them, given that this flight was operated by a Boeing 787.
The Dreamliner is the only commercial passenger aircraft that does not use the so-called bleed air system to feed air into the cabin from the outside.
The term bleed air is derived from the fact that some of the air being sucked into the engines is then bled into the air conditioning system.
This method of delivering fresh air into the passenger cabin has been criticized by campaigners, who claim the air can become contaminated with vaporized engine oil or other contaminants from the engine. Such contamination can make passengers and crew sick if it is fed into the cabin.
Air Conditioning Pack Fault
The more likely cause for this diversion is a fault with the air conditioning packs that supply the air into the cabin.
If even one of these packs stops working, the levels of oxygen in the cabin can drop to the point that passengers and crew could start feeling the early symptoms of hypoxia.
This would not necessarily be bad enough to trigger a depressurization emergency. It would, however, be enough for people to start feeling dizzy, light headed, and potentially even clumsy and euphoric.
This kind of fault is much more likely to affect flight attendants rather than passengers, because they are up and about running a busy meal service. Their bodies therefore require more oxygen to function normally.
2018 Incident Points
Another potential cause, although highly unusual, could be a chemical leak from a spilt cleaning product.
This is exactly what caused a group of American Airlines flight attendants to feel ill shortly after takeoff from London Heathrow during a flight to Philadelphia in October 2018.
Two of the crew members were so badly affected by the smell of the noxious chemicals that they lost consciousness for a short time, leading the pilots to make an emergency diversion to Shannon, Ireland.
American Airlines said the incident was caused by a bottle of industrial cleaning solution known as CH2200D, which had been accidentally left in a toilet by the cleaning crew.
When the plane took off, the bottle tipped over, and the solution soaked into the carpet, releasing a noxious vapor that overpowered some of the flight attendants.
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