Hazmat team meets plane after mysterious odour makes flight crew nauseous

Frontier Airlines flight crew fell nauseous over unexplained “fume-like” odor

Frontier Airlines flight crew fell nauseous over odour (Getty Images)

A hazmat team met a Frontier Airlines flight upon landing after airline crew were left feeling nauseous due to smelling a “fume-like odour.”

The crew were aboard Flight 990 on Thursday that departed from Denver when they started to feel sick and alerted the captain, the airline said in a statement to The Independent.

The odour was contained in the back of the aircraft, so no passengers were affected, according to Frontier Airlines.

Once the plane landed at its destination in San Antonio, the city’s fire department met the aircraft at San Antonio International at 1.50pm to test for any poisonous gases.

Hazmat suits were put on, and the crew hurried to the scene, taking extra precautions in case it was poisonous, but the crew found something a little less sinister.

“Originally, we were called for a strange odour on a plane and people feeling bad, so we sent a whole lot of people: hazmat, rescue, airport rescue, all these things out there, San Antonio Fire Department Public Information Officer Joe Arrington told My San Antonio.

No passengers were reported to have fallen ill (Getty Images)

“But once the plane landed, we realised there was no odour.”

It is unclear what caused the crew to think they could smell this mysterious odour, but Mr Arrington relayed that the nausea was isolated to four crew members and none of the passengers reported feeling sick.

As a precaution, the nauseous crew members were evaluated, but none needed further evaluation or treatment, according to Frontier Airlines.

All passengers on board were taken off the aircraft, and a maintenance team investigated the plane to determine the cause.

“It’s quickly de-escalating, which is always a good thing at the airport,” Mr Arrington told the outlet. “As a precaution, we responded because it came into us as a foul odour on a plane, so that ramps up our response. But once we got everyone down, there were no negative readings of anything on the plane.”

A similar incident occurred last month on a British Airways flight when passengers reported feeling ill due to “fumes” detected on the aircraft.

The plane that had just arrived from Barcelona, Spain, landed back at Heathrow Airport, at which point ambulances and firefighters raced to the scene, with staff standing in hazmat suits outside the plane.

Three people were assessed but discharged, but no elevated readings of chemical substances were found.