Seven Hawaiian Airlines flight attendants were assessed by medical teams after suffering headaches and nausea when an unexplained odour was reported aboard an Airbus A330 flying from Los Angeles to Honolulu.
Seven flight attendants were taken ill after a mystery odour was detected aboard a Hawaiian Airlines Airbus A330 flying from Los Angeles to Honolulu.
The incident occurred on September 24 aboard Alaska Airlines flight AS803, operated by Hawaiian after the two carriers merged under the Alaska Air Group umbrella.
The Airbus A330-200, N375HA, was carrying 252 passengers and nine crew members from Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) to Honolulu’s Daniel K. Inouye International Airport (HNL) when passengers reported an unusual smell inside the aircraft.
According to Honolulu Emergency Medical Services, seven flight attendants subsequently complained of symptoms including headaches and nausea.
Emergency responders were called to meet the aircraft when it arrived in Honolulu at around 1257 local time, with paramedics and EMTs assessing the affected crew members outside Terminal 1.
All seven were evaluated and released, with none requiring transportation to hospital. No passengers required medical treatment.
Hawaiian Airlines said in a statement that the aircraft arrived in Honolulu without incident and confirmed that medical personnel assessed the seven flight attendants.
The carrier added: “Safety is our priority and we thank the medical professionals for their response.”
Hawaiian said it would inspect the aircraft before returning it to service. Flight tracking information subsequently indicated that N375HA returned to flying later that day, operating from Honolulu to Las Vegas.
Cause Remains A Mystery
At the time of writing, the source of the odour has not been publicly identified.
Aircraft cabin smells, and so-called odour or fume events can originate from several sources, meaning it cannot be assumed that engine oil, hydraulic fluid or any other particular substance was responsible for this incident.
Many commercial aircraft, including the Airbus A330, use engine bleed air as part of their environmental control system. Under abnormal circumstances, mechanical problems can allow substances such as oil vapour to enter the air supply.
The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) says such occurrences are rare, but acknowledges that problems including engine oil-seal failures or recirculation fan bearing failures can result in fumes entering an aircraft cabin. Airlines are required to report qualifying incidents to the regulator.
However, there is no indication this caused the odour aboard AS803.
Same A330 In Previous Odour Incident
Intriguingly, this is reportedly not the first time N375HA has experienced an unexplained smell onboard.
On June 23, 2025, the aircraft was operating Hawaiian Airlines flight HA864 from Tokyo Haneda to Honolulu when the crew reported a strange odour in the cockpit shortly after departure.
The A330 subsequently returned to Tokyo, where it was taken out of service while checks were carried out.
Nothing currently suggests the 2025 incident and this latest event were caused by the same fault, but the recurrence on the same aircraft is likely to attract further attention.
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Liam Thompson, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
An Ongoing Issue For Airline Crews
Cabin odour and fume events remain an ongoing issue across the airline industry. Although individual incidents can have completely different causes, concerns surrounding cabin air quality have become a long-running subject of debate between airlines, manufacturers, regulators, unions and crew organisations.
The FAA has produced specific training material covering onboard smoke, odour and fume incidents, including how crew should recognise potential oil or hydraulic-fluid fumes, the possible health considerations following an event and procedures for documenting and reporting them.
In the UK, the Civil Aviation Authority also recognises aircraft “fume events” as incidents involving an unusual odour, mist or smoke. Symptoms reported during contaminated-air events can include eye, nose and throat irritation, headaches and dizziness, although establishing precisely what caused an individual event can be extremely difficult.
Just last month, four Frontier Airlines flight attendants became ill aboard flight F91046 from Cleveland to Fort Lauderdale, with crew members reporting headaches and nausea as the Airbus A321 approached Florida. Medical teams met the aircraft after landing and two of the affected flight attendants were taken to hospital for further assessment. The cause of that incident was not publicly confirmed, and there was no evidence at the time establishing that contaminated cabin air or a fume event was responsible.
The latest Hawaiian incident came just days after another reported cabin-air event involving a flight bound for the US mainland from Hawaii.
On September 20, Delta Air Lines flight DL394 from Kahului to Seattle diverted to Honolulu after passengers reported fumes aboard its Airbus A321neo. Several people complained of symptoms including headaches and nausea, with passengers taken for further medical assessment following the diversion.
The two incidents are not linked and involved different airlines and aircraft types. But their occurrence within days of each other once again puts the sometimes controversial subject of aircraft cabin air quality firmly in the spotlight.
Thankfully, none of the seven Hawaiian Airlines flight attendants aboard AS803 required hospital treatment. What caused the mystery odour that left so many crew members feeling unwell, however, remains unanswered.
Have you experienced a fume or unusual odour event while working onboard an aircraft? Let us know in the comments below.
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