How to avoid flu on a plane
About 3 billion people travel by plane every year, so transmission of infectious diseases during flight has become a global health problem.
Recent studies have revealed that those who are most at risk in respiratory-borne diseases are those row close to a patient. There are many different diseases that can be transmitted during flight, such as cholera, influenza, measles, meningococcal infection, SARS and tuberculosis.
The transmission of the diseases in the cabin occurs in a few different ways. The most common of these are droplets that appear when the sick passenger coughs, sneezes or speaks. These droplets can infect other passengers through contact with their conjunctiva or the respiratory mucosa. If these droplets accumulate on the service desks, seat belts or toilet doors, the passengers touching here touch their eyes and mucous membranes, and pathogens can enter the body.
Seat preference
Research has shown that those sitting in the front seats have less risk of contagious disease than other passengers. Likewise, those sitting by the windows get less infectious diseases than those sitting in the aisles. Because, when sick people or flight attendants pass through here, they will easily infect those who sit in the aisles.
References
Hertzberg, Vicki Stover, and Howard Weiss. “On the 2-row rule for infectious disease transmission on aircraft.” Annals of global health 82.5 (2016): 819-823.
Hertzberg, Vicki Stover, et al. “Behaviors, movements, and transmission of droplet-mediated respiratory diseases during transcontinental airline flights.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115.14 (2018): 3623-3627.
Houghton, Frank. “Geography, global pandemics & air travel: Faster, fuller, further & more frequent.” Journal of infection and public health 12.3 (2019): 448.
Kulczyński, Marcin, et al. “Air transport and the spread of infectious diseases.” World Scientific News 76 (2017): 123-135.
Mahmoud, Seif, et al. “Mapping the Potential for Infectious Disease Transmission in a Wide-Body Aircraft Cabin.” ASME 2019 International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition. American Society of Mechanical Engineers Digital Collection, 2020.
Shaban, Ramon Z., et al. “Global commercial passenger airlines and travel health information regarding infection control and the prevention of infectious disease: What’s in a website?.” Travel medicine and infectious disease (2019): 101528.
Zhang, Nan, and Yuguo Li. “Transmission of influenza A in a student office based on realistic person-to-person contact and surface touch behaviour.” International journal of environmental research and public health 15.8 (2018): 1699.
Weiss, Howard, et al. “The airplane cabin microbiome.” Microbial ecology 77.1 (2019): 87-95.
