The German labor safety board publishes all fume incidents, which means they make it onto Aviation Herald pretty reliably. This is a problem the flight attendants’ union there have been fighting for a decade.
I was on a plane one time and when they backed up from the terminal we could really smell the exhaust fumes being sucked into the cabin, thinking it was a malfunction. The crew told us that happens regularly and said it was worse in winter with the deicers. It went away before we took off.
I always wondered why so many planes "caught on fire" but were brought back into service while I was working at the airport...
We were told to not issue refunds and instead transfer them to new flights or bus them to a hub so they wouldn't miss their connection. We only had 2 jetways and this happened like twice in the 3 months I worked there.
