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Welcome Aboard Toxic Airlines

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by Christiaan Harden
Ever wondered as you’re tucking into to your airline ‘food’ where the air you’re breathing actually comes from? Well … it’s very simple – the engines. Directed and produced by ex-commercial pilot Tristan Loraine, Welcome Aboard Toxic Airlines reveals how, for the last 50 years, crews and passengers have been regularly exposed to dangerous air contaminated with carcinogens and neurotoxins, something that the airline industry has known about all along, but not something they tell you in the pre-flight safety briefing.

In 2001, Loraine was working as an airline captain when he received a call from a union rep that ‘changed his life’. A colleague, Dave Hopkinson, told Tristan that he, his crew and his passengers had been exposed to toxic fumes in the cockpit of a Boeing 757, but the airline industry was covering it up. Tristan began to investigate, only to be retired himself through ill health, as a direct result of contaminated air. He was told that he could never fly again and his childhood dream was over. Using the money he received from his employer the former pilot made this film. With unique access to the aviation industry and a little help from some determined and worried crew-members, his film examines the effects, the politics and the cover-up of a remarkable scandal. The director meets former cabin-crew members from around the world suffering from debilitating neurological disorders and hears their genuinely moving stories. He introduces us to former pilots who, like him, were retired through ill-health and are only willing to speak out now because their livelihoods are no longer on the line, and he examines the lengths to which the aviation industry has gone to cover things up.
According to his film, not only have hundreds of passengers, crew and pilots reported poor health after flying, many have reported unusual smells and misty or smoky air on flights. On several documented occasions pilots have even fallen mysteriously ill in mid-air. Some have managed to land their planes safely and have lived to tell the tale in Loraine’s film; others however, have perhaps not been so lucky. Welcome Aboard Toxic Airlines asks how many crashes that have been put down to ‘pilot error’ should have been put down to contaminated air, and the effect it can have on cognitive functions and a pilot’s judgment? The film reveals how problems were reported with the air system on the Helios flight that crashed on 2005, but with no testing systems onboard or toxicology tests on the pilots, it is of course impossible to tell for sure what caused the accident.

The filmmaker’s determination to convince people of the truth is evident throughout and should be an inspiration to documentary filmmakers everywhere. At 93 minutes, Welcome Aboard Toxic Airlines is perhaps a little long and would benefit if the interviews weren’t quite so repetitive, even if they are broken up with a little animation. However, the film is thoroughly researched and the evidence – including testimony from respected toxicologists, leaked documents and secret e-mails – is overwhelmingly persuasive.

If there’s one thing that you’ll learn from this film, it’s that we should all be a little afraid of flying.
Directed and produced by Tristan Loraine, 2007, 93 mins

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