The plane seats with an 80% risk of flu

IF you already argue with your spouse over who gets the window seat on a flight, this may not improve matters.

Sitting within two seats of someone with flu on a plane gives you an 80 per cent chance of catching the infection, a study has found – but you are less likely to fall ill if you sit by the window.

Researchers calculated the risk of infection in economy class on US continental flights from Atlanta airport.

Anyone sitting within two seats – or one row ahead or behind – of an infected passenger had an 80 per cent chance of picking up an infection, while passengers further away had only a 3 per cent risk of infection. Sickly cabin crew members were found to pass their illness to an average of 4.6 passengers each trip.

Air travel is a major transmission path for respiratory diseases – with influenza and SARS [severe acute respiratory syndrome] two of the most serious viruses spread.

The research, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, said: ‘A droplet-mediated respiratory infectious disease is unlikely to be directly transmitted beyond one metre from the infectious passenger. Thus, transmission is limited to one row in front of or [behind] an infectious passenger.’

But choosing a window seat reduced the chance of infection as passengers had nobody on one side, whereas aisle seats were potentially exposed to people on both sides as well as those walking past, the study found.

The average length of flights studied was between three and a half hours and just over five hours. But the authors, from Emory University in Atlanta, suggested long-haul flights might increase the risk further since they provided ‘many more opportunities for infection’.