Cabin spraying before entering Australia
 

I have travelled to SYD several times with BA and every time about half and hour before landing the CSD comes merrily through the cabin spray ignsome sort of 'insecticide '. The last three times I have made the trip with QF,CX and EK, admittedly not into Sydney, there has been no such event. I am just interested if anyone can throw any light on what, why and who is in the right? Previously I had thought it an absolute necessity, but clearly not now for all!

Almost certainly, all of them.

QF does not spray before arrival in Australia, because it doesn't have to. BA has to, so it does.

On some other routes, spraying is done on departure rather than before arrival, so if you see differences, they also are unlikely to be because one is "right" and one is "wrong".

Airlines have a choice of method -from Australian Government

• Residual - is carried out while no passengers are onboard. The entire aircraft is sprayed with a residual insecticide and lasts eight weeks
• Pre-embarkation - is carried out while no passengers are on board. Crew may be on board as this method is completed up to 40 minutes prior to passengers boarding the aircraft. The treatment lasts for the duration of the single flight
• Pre-flight and top of descent - refers to a two-part process consisting of pre-flight and top of descent spraying. Pre-flight spraying is followed by a further in-flight spray of a non-residual insecticide, carried out at top of descent as the aircraft starts its descent into either Australia or New Zealand. The treatment lasts for the duration of the single flight
• On-arrival - is an in-flight spray of a non- residual insecticide, carried out once the aircraft lands in Australia or New Zealand. The treatment lasts for that one arrival.

ALL planes have to be sprayed at some point. There is no exemption for QF and it is nonsense to say that there is.

I believe that spraying in most places is down to WHO rules and it depends on your departure point and destination.

Australia has their own rules and supplies their own sprays, their provide BA with three different cans, one for the hold one for pre flight and one for top of descent, all have different colour lids.

Very interesting, thanks for the details. ^

Nice to get the info straight from the horse's mouth, as it were. :cool:

I don't know whether this was aimed at me, but I didn't suggest that QF had an exemption. QF doesn't have to spray before arrival in Australia, because AIUI it does the periodic deep treatment permitted by the first option, which I recall being described as sealing the aircraft and letting off permethrin bombs inside it so that the insecticide soaks into all the fabrics and soft furnishings. I did, though, think that it was a bit of an exaggeration to describe flying on a QF aircraft as a bit like sitting in a permethrin bath.

It will be interesting to know how QF decide to play it when their direct LHR-PER service begins. Mind you they only have two 787 so far AIUI, so maybe prespraying as mentioned will be a lot easier than BA pre-treating all their 773's?

I just love learning about these little procedural tidbits ^ :D

Do passengers ever complain about inhaling the spray etc?

Of course they do. At length:

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/brit...ification.html

I'm speculating here, but I doubt that QF will do anything different with these aircraft. AIUI, all QF aircraft that do international routes are treated by QF in the same way. It is cost-effective for QF because the aircraft are arriving in Australia on such a regular and frequent basis.

IMHO spraying is a waste of time. On quite a few occasions I am somewhat amused that, after spraying, a few little bugs come flying past my head totally oblivious to supposedly having been exterminated. I suppose you could argue that it probably kills some and so lessens the risk but with all the cr*p imported on ships, the ineffectiveness of sprays it almost certainly poses more of a risk to passengers then the benefits of killing a few bugs.

It's not an instant kill; that bug may not be feeling so well in the near future.

Wonder if it works on bed bugs?

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/brit...highlight=bugs

It doesn’t work on cockroaches. Or at least, not on the one that crawled across my IFE screen on my last Qantas flight. We were landing in Singapore so perhaps that didn’t matter so much.