Strong-smelling laundry booster beads, which sickened some flight attendants, have been blamed for the emergency diversion of a British Airways Airbus A380 superjumbo with as many as 469 passengers and 24 crew members onboard.
The bizarre incident occurred two hours into a transatlantic flight on July 7 when British Airways service BA292 was flying from Washington Dulles to London Heathrow for what should have been a routine eight-hour overnight flight.
The massive double-decker aircraft departed Washington a little over an hour late but things quickly got a lot worse when the pilots started to notice a strong smell of laundry in the cockpit.
The smell wasn’t, however, just confined to the cockpit and it wasn’t long until the cabin crew told the pilots that they too could smell laundry in the cabin. In fact, the smell was so bad that, according to Canadian aviation accident investigators, the crew started to complain of “dizziness, nausea and headaches”.
The situation became so serious that the pilots then initiated the so-called ‘smoke, fire or fumes’ checklist and declared an emergency. Around two hours into the flight, they decided to divert the plane to Boston where paramedics were put on standby to meet the aircraft.
Thankfully, the superjumbo landed without incident at Boston’s Logan airport, although, according to flight tracking website, Flight Radar 24, the flight had to be cancelled overnight.
Many pilots and flight attendants who have experienced an inflight fume event often describe the smell as akin to smelly socks so what was the cause of this incident with the exact opposite smell.
Well, investigators quickly discovered that five pallets of ‘fresh scented laundry beads’ were being carried in the cargo hold and have pinned the blame for the incident on this freight.
These laundry booster beads must have had quite the stench, as the aircraft ended up being grounded for over 60 hours before being returned to service.
Airlines have to follow incredibly stringent rules in relation to what cargo they are and aren’t allowed to carry with ‘dangerous goods regulations’ drawn up by the UN’s aviation body the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).
That being said, this isn’t the first time that a smell from the cargo hold has forced the emergency diversion of a flight. In 2019, an Air Canada Rouge flight from Vancouver to Montreal declared an emergency after the pilots had to put on their oxygen masks because of a ‘rank smelling’ stench in the cockpit.
It turned out that the stench was coming from a shipment of Durian fruit that was being carried in the forward cargo hold.
Durian is most commonly found across Southeast Asia, where it is a popular fruit and regularly seen at markets, but in many countries, the fruit is banned from being carried on public transport because it has such a powerful and unique smell.
