An alleged presence of smells on board and the indisposition of some crew members led a TAP aircraft, an Airbus A321neo, with 192 passengers, to divert to Porto, after taking off from Lisbon bound for London. The information provided by the Office for the Prevention and Investigation of Aircraft and Railway Accidents (GPIAAF) in the quarterly bulletin, released this Thursday, reports strange smells between Lisbon-Funchal flights.
According to the report, the aircraft carried out a flight between Humberto Delgado Airport and Madeira International Airport, where the presence of strange smells (dirty socks) was reported in the rear of the aircraft.
It is explained that the Funchal maintenance services “carried out an inspection of the two engines and APU without any reported anomalies. On the next flight from Funchal to Lisbon, strange smells were reported at take-off, however they disappeared shortly afterwards”
The information is in the quarterly bulletin released yesterday by the Aircraft and Railway Accident Prevention and Investigation Office (GPIAAF), in the section where the event, which occurred on March 11, is analyzed.
At 15:46, the A321neo took off from Lisbon bound for London Heathrow Airport but, at 16:20, “already in Spanish airspace, the cockpit was informed by the cabin crew chief that one of the crew members working at the back of the aircraft was feeling nauseous”.
The GPIAAF reports that “without any indication or sign of smoke or smells in the cockpit, the crew decided to maintain flight level and wait five minutes to assess the situation.”
“With prior information about smells (smokes) on previous flights on the aircraft, and given that other cabin crew members confirmed similar symptoms, the flight crew decided to divert to Porto airport, complying with the procedures” foreseen in these situations, “including the use of oxygen masks”, says the GPIAAF.
This organization reports that, during the descent of the aircraft and already in contact with Porto airport, “given that some passengers reported having some symptoms, it was decided to declare an emergency and request medical assistance upon arrival, preventing possible delays in the provision of these services”.
The landing “occurred normally with the passengers disembarking”, with the seven crew members and two passengers being “transported to the hospital for a medical evaluation”.
“Between the incident on 11 March that led to the aircraft landing in Porto in an emergency and the aircraft’s return to regular service on the morning of 14 March, the operator’s maintenance services carried out work to detect the reported anomaly, following the manufacturer’s recommendations for this type of situation, without conclusive results”, reveals the GPIAAF.
This office indicates that TAP carried out a position flight from Porto to Lisbon with technicians on board to try to isolate possible sources of odors, “also without conclusive results”.
In Lisbon, adds the GPIAAF, “a detailed inspection was carried out on the two engines and APU without any indication of an anomaly of internal fluid leakage that could have contributed to contamination of the pneumatic system”.
In addition, “several decontaminations of the pneumatic system were also carried out, with no reports of other events on the aircraft since its return to service”.
“When consulting the operator’s occurrence database for the same aircraft, on 11 November 2024, a water spill was recorded in the hold associated with the transport of fish. The corrective actions involved cleaning the area, without removing the pallets from the hold. According to the operator, the aircraft has not undergone any major intervention with the removal of pallets from the hold since the date of the aforementioned occurrence”, details the GPIAAF.
According to this research body, “it cannot be ruled out that the smell event on March 11th originated from, or may have contributed to, directly or through a cumulative effect, the event of November 2024”.
The GPIAAF indicates that in 2024 there were 1,249 reports of this type of occurrence in the European database, an issue that has been the subject of attention by industry, research bodies and EASA, the European regulator.