American Airlines Tests New Virus-Killing Coating on Plane Surfaces

"At the beginning of the year, with the outbreak, they started working on their reformulation to make sure it was active against coronavirus,” Gerba says, “and they were successful.”

American Airlines says that though for now it can apply the product only in Texas, it eventually will use it on all its planes: “We will be applying SurfaceWise2 to our entire fleet, including the aircraft of our American Eagle regional partners,” says airline spokesperson Leah Rubertino. She adds that the airline will continue the rigorous aircraft cleaning it began during the outbreak, including the disinfection performed before every flight “and even deeper overnight cleaning."

Other airlines are stepping up their cleaning protocols, too, touting super-efficient HEPA air filters and high-tech advances such as “a handheld ultraviolet light wand” that the United Arab Emirates’ Etihad Airways is testing for its effectiveness in disinfecting flight decks and cabins. Delta's Global Cleanliness team is working with “microbiologists and germ-kill experts from Lysol” to coordinate onboard disinfection. United Airlines is working with Clorox and the Cleveland Clinic to ensure cleanliness as part of the “United CleanPlus commitment."

And JetBlue is conducting deep cleans of aircraft each night, applying a hospital-grade disinfectant with electrostatic sprayers, “which allows it to fully coat and cling to surfaces,” according to its website. The airline is also testing a space-age-looking germ-busting contraption called the Honeywell UV Cabin System, which Honeywell describes as a beverage-cart-sized mechanism with extendable arms that can sweep the cabin with ultraviolet C (UV-C) light, killing “certain viruses and bacteria,” in less than 10 minutes.