Boeing to test ‘curtain of air’ to fight Covid in jet cabins

Boeing plans to test whether blasts of air could prevent germs and viruses such as Covid-19 from circulating between rows of jetliner passengers, as part of a broader initiative to make air travel safer and greener. The planemaker is installing 20 overhead air vents with special 3D-printed nozzles to create a “curtain of air” in a new 737 Max 9 jet, Doug Christensen, a Boeing technical fellow, told reporters Thursday. Alaska Airlines contributed the so-called ecoDemonstrator aircraft to test new technologies over the next five months. “If you got on a plane and the person in front of you sneezes and those particles are floating around, it makes you nervous,” said Christensen, who is also the ecoDemonstrator program technical leader. “Those nozzles will actually drive air down and away from the breathing area, and cause the particles to be recirculated and cleaned.” The ecoDemonstrator is the eighth commercial airliner that’s served as a flying testbed since 2012 to try out 195 projects dreamed up by Boeing’s engineers. <br/>