Latest news with #JayRobert
Daily Mirror
09-05-2025
- Daily Mirror
Real reason planes are so cold according to flight attendants
Frequent flyers know to bring an extra layer on board an airplane. But cooler cabin temperatures, while somewhat inconvenient, actually benefit passengers, ensuring they have a more pleasant journey. Aeroplanes are notorious for being quite chilly, and the complementary blanket on long-haul flights does not always help. But there is a reason the temperature in the cabin is kept cool, according to flight attendants. Senior international cabin crew member and the creator of A Fly Guy's Cabin Crew Lounge, Jay Robert, shared the reason behind cabin temperature, and it's more complex than you may have expected. According to Robert, the cool mercury is not necessarily a bad thing either, and may end up benefiting your flight experience.. Speaking to UniLad Tech in 2024, Robert explained the mechanics of a plane's air conditioning system. 'When the plane is at the gate, it's cooled using an external air conditioning system. Once in the air, the aircraft relies on its internal cooling system, powered by the engines,' he clarifies. Robert went on to explain that flight attendants have limited capacity to adjust the plane's thermostat through their cabin control system. Rather it is the plane's pilots that are in charge of the main thermostat and any significant changes to temperature are their call. Taylor Garland, spokesperson for the Association of Flight Attendants, said that airplane cabins are divided into zones for temperature control. But that the process of temperature control on a plane is an 'imperfect science'. Garland explained: 'If a zone is large and/or the temperature sensor is near a source of heat - just like if the thermostat at home is near a heating vent - then the system will think that the cabin is warmer than it is.' Robert suggested that cool temperatures should not be avoided though, as they can be beneficial to passengers' health and safety. In recalling working on a large aircraft carrying over 600 passengers, Robert said he had to regularly check that the temperature did not go above 73°F (23C). He explained that he had to keep a close watch on the temperature because passengers are more likely to faint if temperatures exceed 75°F (24C). Colder air helps counteract the effects of the cabin's dry, pressurised environment, which can contribute to dehydration and dizziness. There is also one sequential benefit of cool air on planes: a pleasant-smelling cabin. According to Robert, warmer cabins 'smell funkier' because heat energises odour-causing molecules, resulting in bad smells building up quicker. That said, many people find themselves feeling sick after flying. This is likely because of the close proximity to other passengers and the cold temperature can make some travellers particularly uncomfortable, especially with an air conditioning unit above their heads. If you are hoping to avoid a cold, travel expert Yasmin Peckel has provided key tips for picking the perfect seat. She has warned against picking the aisle seat. "Research indicates that those seated in the aisle are more at risk of catching germs, as you'll come into contact with a far greater number of people during your flight. If you're concerned about catching something, it's a sensible idea to choose a window seat instead,! Peckel explains. She continues: 'Aeroplane air is usually circulated through hospital grade filters, designed to contain and remove bacteria. This means that germs are unlikely to be directly transmitted beyond a meter.'
Daily Mail
30-04-2025
- Daily Mail
Flight attendant reveals why planes are always so cold
Passengers often find themselves scrambling for their jumper during flights as the temperature on the plane turns chilly. Airplane cabins can get notoriously cold, but according to flight attendants, there's a very good reason for it. Jay Robert, a senior international cabin crew member and the creator of A Fly Guy's Cabin Crew Lounge, recently shared the surprisingly complex reason behind cabin temperature - and why being cold in the air is actually a beneficial thing. Speaking to UniLad Tech in 2024, Robert explained: 'When the plane is at the gate, it's cooled using an external air conditioning system. 'Once in the air, the aircraft relies on its internal cooling system, powered by the engines.' While pilots are in charge of the main thermostat, flight attendants can make minor adjustments through their cabin control system - but a significant change requires a call to the cockpit. According to Taylor Garland, spokesperson for the Association of Flight Attendants, airplane cabins are divided into zones for temperature control. However, the system is an 'imperfect science,' as she added: 'If a zone is large and/or the temperature sensor is near a source of heat - just like if the thermostat at home is near a heating vent - then the system will think that the cabin is warmer than it is.' But this isn't necessarily a bad thing, as cool temperatures are beneficial to passengers' health, safety, and, surprisingly, scent. Robert recalled working on a massive aircraft that carried over 600 passengers, and one of things he had to 'regularly check' was that the temperature did not go above 73 degrees Fahrenheit (23 degrees Celsius). The reason for this, he revealed, is because passengers are more likely to faint if temperatures exceed 75°F (24°C). Colder air helps counteract the effects of the cabin's dry, pressurised environment, which can contribute to dehydration and dizziness. The third and final benefit of cool air on planes is a little less scientific yet perhaps the most essential during on a long flight: a pleasant-smelling cabin. According to Robert, warmer cabins 'smell funkier' as heat energises odour-causing molecules, meaning a rather unsavoury smell can build up quickly on a warm plane. Meanwhile, a flight attendant revealed she 'judges' passengers who order a popular brewed beverage onboard on a plane - as she blasted their selection as 'sketchy'. Leanna Coy, from New England, who works for an US-based airline, took to TikTok on 21 April to vent her frustrations at travellers who opt for the hot drink. Posting a video to her page, @leannacoy, the flight attendant took aim at passengers who prefer to order decaffeinated coffee while cruising through the skies. In an accompanying caption, she wrote: 'Adults ordering apple juice? Pop off. Margherita at 10am? Slay. Bloody Mary? Gross, but that's your preference. Decaf AIRPLANE coffee though?' In the clip, she admitted she came to a realisation that she 'judges' passengers who order decaf coffee, as 'ordering coffee on a plane is little bit sketchy.' Leanne stressed that she understood a weary flyer or a pilot's need for caffeinated drinks during their travels, as they would likely be tired and requiring an energy boost. But she added: 'You're telling me you genuinely enjoy the taste of that airplane coffee so much that you're willing to drink it - not out of the necessity for caffeine - just for the flavour itself?'
Yahoo
10-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
'We go from dinner service to dealing with a corpse': What happens when an air passenger dies
If a passenger dies on board a flight, cabin crew members like Jay Robert have to think fast. "We go from service to lifesaving to mortician, dealing with dead bodies and then doing crowd control," the 40-year-old says. "We're having to calculate: 'Okay, we still need to serve 300 people breakfast or dinner and we have to deal with this'." Jay, a cabin manager for a major European airline and a former crew member for Emirates, has more than a decade's experience working on planes. Like all cabin crew, he has been trained to deal with passenger deaths, but has only experienced one himself. He says deaths on planes are "very uncommon" and that people are more likely to die on longer flights because of the physical toll of being immobile for a long period. Some flight crew don't experience an on-board fatality during their entire career, he says. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2013 concluded that dying on a flight was "rare". The study, which looked at emergency calls from five airlines to a medical communications centre between January 2008 and October 2010, found that 0.3% of patients who had an in-flight medical emergency died. Last month, an Australian couple spoke about their "traumatic" experience of sitting next to a body on a plane from Melbourne to Doha after a woman died during the flight. Mitchell Ring and Jennifer Colin said cabin crew placed her corpse, covered in blankets, next to Mr Ring for the remaining four hours of the flight without offering to move him. Qatar Airways said it followed appropriate guidelines and apologised for "any inconvenience or distress this incident may have caused". BBC News has spoken to cabin crew and other aviation experts about how mid-air deaths are usually handled, what the rules are around storing corpses on planes and what it's like to work on a flight when someone has died. Flight crew themselves can't certify a death - this has to be done by medical personnel. Sometimes, this happens on the plane if there's someone qualified on board but more often, it is done upon landing. Most airlines follow the International Air Transport Association's (IATA) guidelines on what to do if a passenger has been presumed dead, though policies vary slightly by airline. In a medical emergency, cabin crew would administer first aid and seek help from any passengers who were medical professionals, while the captain would use a telecommunications system to get instructions from emergency doctors on the ground, says Marco Chan, a former commercial pilot and a senior lecturer at Buckinghamshire New University. If necessary, the captain would divert the flight as soon as possible. But it's not always possible to save a passenger. If a passenger is presumed dead, the person's eyes should be closed and they should be placed in a body bag, if available, or otherwise, covered with a blanket up to the neck, according to the IATA guidelines. Planes have very limited space, and it's a challenge to find a suitable spot to place the body without disturbing other passengers and compromising the plane's safety. Per the IATA, the body should be moved to a seat away from other passengers or to another area of the plane, if possible. But if the plane is full, they would usually be returned to their own seat. In a narrow-body plane - those typically used for short-haul flights across the UK or within Europe - there isn't enough room on board "to really shield a passenger from what has happened", says Ivan Stevenson, associate professor in aviation management at Coventry University. Space on these planes is "very, very confined", he says. "If someone dies on board an aircraft like that, it's quite likely they will need to be placed in a seat." Prof Stevenson acknowledges it's "very unfortunate, very unpleasant" but that crew have to put the plane's safety first. Crew will "try to give some decency to the dead body" by placing it on an empty aisle and using curtains, blankets and dim lights, Jay says, but they might not have much choice. The body can't be placed in the galley in case it blocks an emergency exit. It also can't be left in the aisles in case there is an emergency evacuation, Jay says, or placed in the crew rest area on a long-haul flight. It's also hard to physically manoeuvre a body in such a confined space, Jay says. This is what happened in the Qatar Airways case, when Mr Ring said the deceased passenger couldn't be carried down the aisle. A plane would divert to save a passenger's life in the event of a medical emergency - but it usually wouldn't if they were already presumed dead, aviation experts and cabin crew say. There's "no point diverting", Mr Chan says. The captain would inform both the airline's operations centre and air traffic control of the passenger's death as soon as possible, and the plane would be met by local authorities, Prof Stevenson says. Either local authorities or a representative from the airline would contact the passenger's family if they were flying alone. Ally Murphy, who hosts the Red Eye Podcast where she interviews flight attendants, experienced one passenger death during a flight in her 14 years working as cabin crew. A male passenger who had been travelling alone from Accra, Ghana, to London passed out in his seat. After being alerted by the passenger in the seat next to him, the crew realised he wasn't breathing normally and didn't have a pulse. The crew moved the man to the galley to perform CPR. "You're kind of trapped in a tin can that's not designed for roaming around," Ally recalls. But there was more space than usual in the galley because the carts were out for meal service. Ally and another crew member performed CPR for 40 minutes without success. The captain then decided to divert the plane to Lyon, France, and though Ally and her colleague knew they should have strapped themselves in for landing, they continued performing CPR the whole time, she says. "We didn't want to leave him." After landing, paramedics took the passenger away. He was declared dead, having suffered an abdominal aortic aneurysm, Ally recalls. "I held him in my arms for the final moments of his life," she says. "He probably would have chosen someone else for that, but he got me." After the plane set off again following the diversion, the passengers were "quite quiet and sombre," she says. But on arrival at their destination airport, one passenger from the flight started shouting at her because he missed his connecting flight. "That's the one and only time that I've ever told a passenger where to go," she says. Witnessing a passenger dying was a traumatic experience for Ally. "I went home and sat in the bath and I cried. I could taste the man's breath for about a week afterwards," she says. "It was a little traumatising for a while. I couldn't watch anything with CPR for a long time." Cabin crew are offered support after a passenger dies, including therapy and the option to have their rosters cleared for a few days so they can process what has happened, Jay says. Ally and her colleagues had a debrief with her airline after the passenger died where they were given "reassurances that we did everything that we could". Afterwards, she was able to schedule her shifts with a friend for a month because she felt "a bit shell-shocked". Because cabin crew aren't used to passenger fatalities, it can be an especially harrowing experience when a passenger does die on board, Jay says. "We are not doctors, we are not nurses," Jay says. "While we are trained to deal with it, we don't face it every day, so we're not really immune to it." Will flights really reach net zero by 2050 - and at what cost to passengers? Why is it so hard to move a runway just 12 metres? Why did a plane crash in Toronto, and how did everyone survive?
BBC News
10-03-2025
- General
- BBC News
What happens when a plane passenger dies during a flight?
If a passenger dies on board a flight, cabin crew members like Jay Robert have to think fast."We go from service to lifesaving to mortician, dealing with dead bodies and then doing crowd control," the 40-year-old says. "We're having to calculate: 'Okay, we still need to serve 300 people breakfast or dinner and we have to deal with this'."Jay, a cabin manager for a major European airline and a former crew member for Emirates, has more than a decade's experience working on planes. Like all cabin crew, he has been trained to deal with passenger deaths, but has only experienced one says deaths on planes are "very uncommon" and that people are more likely to die on longer flights because of the physical toll of being immobile for a long period. Some flight crew don't experience an on-board fatality during their entire career, he says. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2013 concluded that dying on a flight was "rare". The study, which looked at emergency calls from five airlines to a medical communications centre between January 2008 and October 2010, found that 0.3% of patients who had an in-flight medical emergency month, an Australian couple spoke about their "traumatic" experience of sitting next to a body on a plane from Melbourne to Doha after a woman died during the Ring and Jennifer Colin said cabin crew placed her corpse, covered in blankets, next to Mr Ring for the remaining four hours of the flight without offering to move him. Qatar Airways said it followed appropriate guidelines and apologised for "any inconvenience or distress this incident may have caused".BBC News has spoken to cabin crew and other aviation experts about how mid-air deaths are usually handled, what the rules are around storing corpses on planes and what it's like to work on a flight when someone has crew themselves can't certify a death - this has to be done by medical personnel. Sometimes, this happens on the plane if there's someone qualified on board but more often, it is done upon landing. Most airlines follow the International Air Transport Association's (IATA) guidelines on what to do if a passenger has been presumed dead, though policies vary slightly by airline. 'Quite likely the body gets placed in an empty seat' In a medical emergency, cabin crew would administer first aid and seek help from any passengers who were medical professionals, while the captain would use a telecommunications system to get instructions from emergency doctors on the ground, says Marco Chan, a former commercial pilot and a senior lecturer at Buckinghamshire New University. If necessary, the captain would divert the flight as soon as it's not always possible to save a a passenger is presumed dead, the person's eyes should be closed and they should be placed in a body bag, if available, or otherwise, covered with a blanket up to the neck, according to the IATA have very limited space, and it's a challenge to find a suitable spot to place the body without disturbing other passengers and compromising the plane's safety. Per the IATA, the body should be moved to a seat away from other passengers or to another area of the plane, if possible. But if the plane is full, they would usually be returned to their own seat. In a narrow-body plane - those typically used for short-haul flights across the UK or within Europe - there isn't enough room on board "to really shield a passenger from what has happened", says Ivan Stevenson, associate professor in aviation management at Coventry on these planes is "very, very confined", he says. "If someone dies on board an aircraft like that, it's quite likely they will need to be placed in a seat."Prof Stevenson acknowledges it's "very unfortunate, very unpleasant" but that crew have to put the plane's safety will "try to give some decency to the dead body" by placing it on an empty aisle and using curtains, blankets and dim lights, Jay says, but they might not have much body can't be placed in the galley in case it blocks an emergency exit. It also can't be left in the aisles in case there is an emergency evacuation, Jay says, or placed in the crew rest area on a long-haul flight. It's also hard to physically manoeuvre a body in such a confined space, Jay says. This is what happened in the Qatar Airways case, when Mr Ring said the deceased passenger couldn't be carried down the aisle.A plane would divert to save a passenger's life in the event of a medical emergency - but it usually wouldn't if they were already presumed dead, aviation experts and cabin crew say. There's "no point diverting", Mr Chan captain would inform both the airline's operations centre and air traffic control of the passenger's death as soon as possible, and the plane would be met by local authorities, Prof Stevenson says. Either local authorities or a representative from the airline would contact the passenger's family if they were flying alone. 'I cried in the bath' Ally Murphy, who hosts the Red Eye Podcast where she interviews flight attendants, experienced one passenger death during a flight in her 14 years working as cabin crew.A male passenger who had been travelling alone from Accra, Ghana, to London passed out in his seat. After being alerted by the passenger in the seat next to him, the crew realised he wasn't breathing normally and didn't have a crew moved the man to the galley to perform CPR. "You're kind of trapped in a tin can that's not designed for roaming around," Ally recalls. But there was more space than usual in the galley because the carts were out for meal and another crew member performed CPR for 40 minutes without success. The captain then decided to divert the plane to Lyon, France, and though Ally and her colleague knew they should have strapped themselves in for landing, they continued performing CPR the whole time, she says."We didn't want to leave him."After landing, paramedics took the passenger away. He was declared dead, having suffered an abdominal aortic aneurysm, Ally recalls."I held him in my arms for the final moments of his life," she says. "He probably would have chosen someone else for that, but he got me." After the plane set off again following the diversion, the passengers were "quite quiet and sombre," she says. But on arrival at their destination airport, one passenger from the flight started shouting at her because he missed his connecting flight. "That's the one and only time that I've ever told a passenger where to go," she a passenger dying was a traumatic experience for Ally."I went home and sat in the bath and I cried. I could taste the man's breath for about a week afterwards," she says. "It was a little traumatising for a while. I couldn't watch anything with CPR for a long time."Cabin crew are offered support after a passenger dies, including therapy and the option to have their rosters cleared for a few days so they can process what has happened, Jays says. Ally and her colleagues had a debrief with her airline after the passenger died where they were given "reassurances that we did everything that we could". Afterwards, she was able to schedule her shifts with a friend for a month because she felt "a bit shell-shocked".Because cabin crew aren't used to passenger fatalities, it can be an especially harrowing experience when a passenger does die on board, Jay says."We are not doctors, we are not nurses," Jay says. "While we are trained to deal with it, we don't face it every day, so we're not really immune to it."
