Flight Attendants Too Sick To Fly

What appears to be an ordinary garage sale, has an extraordinary purpose—to raise money for flight attendants who have been so seriously injured that they can no longer fly.

"I was perfectly normal before this happened to me," Flight Attendant Mary Jacobs says. "I'm unable to work. I'm on food stamps."

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Jacobs' tale is the most harrowing of hundreds reported by flight attendants for Alaska Airlines. Her condition is by far the most serious.

She remembers the surprise she found as she boarded for the last leg of what had been a routine flight last October. "At the bulkhead—the first-class bulkhead—like a fog, a mist the entire length of the aircraft."

Mary Jacobs' tremors are so bad she can no longer work.(CBS)

"Another flight attendant came back, and she said, 'We need to get off this airplane.' When you see the air you're breathing, something's not right."

She says the mist dissipated and passengers were allowed to board. Then shortly after Flight #231 left San Diego for Seattle, Mary Jacobs started to shake.

"I was trembling so bad I couldn't even pour coffee," she remembers. "The other gal who was working with me in the back needed to go get oxygen, because she was fumbling about. I was having a severe headache, as was she. I had a metallic taste in my mouth, a twitch over my left eye."

That was eight months ago. But the tremors never stopped.
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And what did the doctors tell her? "That I have a neurotoxin in my system that's caused me to have tremors," she says.

Since 1989 flight attendants for Alaska Airlines have reported hundreds of what the company calls unexplained illnesses. The airline has spent millions of dollars trying to find out what's making them sick. Now the union, after an investigation of its own, believes it has solved the mystery.

The flight attendants' theory: Leaking hydraulic fluids and lubricating oils are poisoning the cabin air in Alaska's MD-80s. In documents obained by CBS News, the union claims those fluids are being sucked into the plane through the auxiliary power unit, or APU, used to provide air conditioning when the jet is on the ground.

And high temperatures inside the APU, the theory concludes, are superheating the fluids into toxic vapors.

"In the beginning when we first heard the theory it was actually intriguing," says John Fowler, who is in charge of Alaska's fleet.

"We at Alaska Airlines are frustrated that we've not been able to find an explanation as to why some of our flight attendants appear to become ill on some of our flights, he says. "In the end we have proven to our satisfaction that it is not a plausible theory."

He admits that on rare occasions hydraulic failures send noxious fumes spewing into the passenger cabin.

"It's been described in the cabin as mist, little bit of acrid, kind of a metallic taste," he says. "It's not a comfortable thing."

But Fowler argues that kind of incident can and does happen with all models of planes and at all airlines. And, he says, such exposures cause no long-term health problems and don't explain what is making Alaska's flight attendants sick.

"I was perfectly normal," Jacobs says. "The company hired me as a flight attendant and a good flight attendant without tremors, and they're denying me. The company's denying me saying it didn't happen. That I'm a theory."

Whether the theory is right or wrong, the warning label on the engine oil used by Alaska, and many other carriers, worries flight attendants. It reads: "Prolonged or repeated breathing of oil mist . . . or prolonged or repeated skin contact can cause nervous-system damage."

And the airline, while denying any link between fluid leaks and illness, has taken extraordinary action. It's installing new devices to prevent leaks and ordering pilots to use the APU only if necessary.

For CBS News Correspondent Bob Orr's full report click above.

CBS News Correspondent Bob Orr