Coughing dummies help Boeing and United track viruses on planes

For the past four months, United and Boeing have been flying around jetliners loaded with mannequins, aerosol sprays, sensors and scientists in an effort to understand how contaminated air moves through passenger planes. The research is just one small part of a sweeping global campaign to figure out the threats posed by the coronavirus. But for the airline industry, the results could help determine how quickly carriers bounce back from the edge of disaster after the pandemic made people afraid to get on a plane. The US military initiated the $1m study when the spread of Covid-19 raised concerns about infection risks for troops transported on passenger jets. Companies including United, Boeing and Zeteo Tech, a Maryland-based biodefense and medical device maker, are contributing equipment and expertise. If the findings can show how likely it is for a passenger to be infected by breathing the air on a plane, “it’ll probably drive some policy decisions,” said Mike McLoughlin, Zeteo’s VP of research. To collect data, researchers placed mannequins with human-like heads in various seats throughout seven models of Boeing and Airbus jets, then made them cough. Or rather, they simulated a human cough, and how aerosolized particles are expelled and disseminated through the air on the plane, McLoughlin said. Aerosol particles will behave differently under different cabin scenarios, said Byron Jones, an engineering professor at Kansas State University who studies airline cabin air and was not involved in the project. Gas and particles in a cabin become “a witches’ cauldron,” he said, based on air flows, particulate sizes and other factors. “It just swirls and churns and twists. It’s very chaotic,” he said. But that churning isn’t necessarily a bad thing: “That’s what you want to see in a general ventilation (system).” Story has more.<br/>