Exploring Post-Pandemic Airplane Cleaning

 

Highlighting some of the best practices that airlines adopted to make their aircrafts cleaner and safer for their passengers.

 

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Specialised Cleaning
 
February 28, 2022
 
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Exploring Post-Pandemic Airplane Cleaning
 

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, airplanes and airports were considered notoriously germy. However, the pandemic has made people more aware about hygiene and infection control than ever. Speaking about aircrafts, hygiene is an even bigger challenge because of high-touch surfaces like tray tables and cramped spaces that make social distancing difficult. 

The initial phase of the pandemic saw travel restrictions. When these restrictions were finally lifted, passengers were surprised to find the airports and aircrafts looking different — cleaner than usual. Clearly, a lot of planning, strategy and advanced cleaning procedures had been put into place before lifting the travel restrictions. 

Here’s highlighting some of the best practices that airlines adopted to make their aircrafts cleaner and safer for their passengers.

Using high-tech disinfectants

To disinfect the larger surfaces of aircrafts like the walls, side panels, flight deck and entryways, these areas are sprayed with extra efficient “electrostatic” cleaning agents every single day.

These disinfectants work by charging antimicrobial liquid as it passes through a nozzle, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Next, antimicrobial droplets with a positive electrical charge are attracted to negatively charged environmental surfaces, and cling to hard, non-porous environmental surfaces. 

The spray creates an ionized protective layer that has small needles and breaks the outer part of the virus, rendering it ineffective.

Cleaning all the high-touch surfaces

The importance of cleaning high touch surfaces has been reiterated over and over again in the past two years. Aircrafts are no exception to this. COVID-19, as we now know is mainly spread through respiratory droplets and aerosolized particles. When an infected person coughs, talks, sneezes or breathes in close proximity to others, these virus-containing particles can survive on surfaces and transfer to people through touching the object, and then touching your nose, mouth or eyes. So it’s important to disinfect high-touch surfaces.

Aircrafts have approximately 81 specific high touchpoints such as handrails, seatbelts, seats, air vents and bathrooms that need to be wiped down before passengers board the plane. Typically, a frontline team of five or six people use a hospital-grade disinfectant to clean these surfaces before each flight.

 

Clean airflow in the cabin

Since the space in an aircraft is restricted, there has been a lot of speculation about the air quality. Interestingly, viruses and germs don’t spread easily on an aircraft because of the way the air is filtered and circulated in the cabin, according to the CDC.

Air in the cabin of an aircraft is refreshed every two to four minutes. The air that a passenger breathes inside an aircraft is a combination of outside air and HEPA filtered air, similar to the ones we commonly see in hospitals. Air is pumped from the ceiling into the cabin at a speed of about a yard per second and sucked out again below the window seats. About 40 percent of a cabin’s air gets filtered through this HEPA system; the remaining 60 percent is fresh and piped in from outside the plane. HEPA filters can capture at least 99.97% of airborne particles, making the indoor air quality of a plane better that of restaurants, hotels, or other public facilities. 

The efficiency of these filters is known to increase for even smaller particles. So even if the aerosoles containing SARS-CoV-2 can be quite small, HEPA filters effectively remove the vast majority from the air.

However, even with clean air, it is encouraged that passengers be encouraged to wear masks, face shields in order to prevent spreading your own respiratory droplets to people sitting in close proximity on the flight.

Encouraging the use of PPE

According to the Centers for Disease Control, traveling by any mode of transportation can increase your chance of getting and spreading COVID-19. 

Even though the air quality inside an aircraft is better than other indoor facilities, it’s hard to maintain social distancing. Appropriate usage of PPE like masks, gloves and face shields can go a long way in curbing the spread of infection. 

Educate your passengers about the fact that wearing a mask the whole time they are on a plane keep themselves and the people sitting in close proximity to them safe. 

Most countries have their own laws requiring air passengers to wear masks. Several airlines have implemented their own mask rules where the law of the country doesn’t state the mask requirement. 

Identifying the source of infection

Should aircraft contamination be noticed, the source of infection must be immediately identified and contained in order to minimize the risk of infection to others.

Testing the cleaning chemicals, equipment and technology

In a recent study, scientists from University of Arizona placed a surrogate live virus, the MS2 on touch points like tray tables and seatbacks around an aircraft. 

Scientists chose to use the MS2 virus for two key reasons: Humans cannot contract it, and it is more resistant than the coronavirus. That means if the cleaning methods could kill MS2, the same methods would also eliminate the coronavirus.

 

An electrostatic sprayer was then used to apply an approved disinfectant to a row of seats inside a mockup cabin.

One of the benefits of testing a live virus on an aircraft in the field is that scientists can observe how those cleaning methods will perform on multiple surfaces. 

Scientist applied droplets of the MS2 virus to high touch point surfaces like seat backs, tray tables, arm rests, windows, overhead stow bins, lavatory faucets, toilet lids, seat decks as well as touchpoints in the galley. 

The cleaning crew that was unaware of the test came in and applied currently used airline cleaning methods which include chemical disinfectants, electrostatic spraying, antimicrobial coatings and Ultraviolet wands. 

Scientists then swabbed 230 locations around the aircraft, packed those swabs in a cooler and overnighted them to the University of Arizona laboratory for testing.

In the end, scientists found all of the cleaning methods were effective in eliminating 99.9% of the MS2 virus.

Scientists also took parts of the aircraft and, in the lab, applied the new coronavirus to those surfaces and performed additional testing, to make sure that the MS2 virus was more resistant than COVID-19 on those surfaces to give confidence in the results of the study that cleaning processes that kill MS2 will also kill COVID-19. 

As the science of eliminating the coronavirus evolnes, the cleaning industry has successfully developed technologies and solutions that inactivate the virus and make the world a safer place.