Bugs on a plane: cabin crew can make you ill

DO YOU worry about catching a bug on a plane? According to the latest research, you should.

Scientists have modelled the way bugs spread on flights and found that it’s not just your fellow passengers who could make you ill, but cabin crew too.

The study showed that an infected air steward presents a greater risk to anyone in an aisle or middle seat than those sitting next to the window.

However, if you are seated within one row or two seats of an infected passenger you have an 80 per cent chance of catching a bug, no matter which type of seat you are in.

Researchers at Emory University in the US used data on passenger and crew movements to model the likelihood of travellers catching a respiratory disease during a flight.

With more than 3billion airline passengers annually, the in-flight transmission of infectious diseases is an important global health concern.

More than a dozen cases of in-flight transmission of serious infections have been documented, including severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and swine flu (H1N1).

The main transmission routes for diseases such as influenza are respiratory droplets propelled short distances when an infectious person sneezes, coughs, talks, or even breathes.

The researchers observed passengers and crew on 10 transcontinental flights during the US flu season and found that a sick member of cabin crew was likely to infect an average of 4.6 passengers per flight, with those sitting in the middle or aisle seats at greatest risk. A sick passenger posed a far lower risk to their fellow travellers and would, on average, infect less than one person per flight, as long as they sat more than a row or two seats away.

The researchers worked out that because travellers generally had less contact with their fellow passengers it was only those sitting close to someone coughing and spluttering who risked infection. Anyone sitting within a row or two seats of a poorly passenger had an 80 per cent of picking up an infection, the study found.

Vicki Stover Hertzberg, the lead author of the study and professor at the Center for Data Science at Emory University, said that while cabin crew posed a risk to passengers they were more likely to infect one another.

“They spend a lot of time together in the galley and when they are spending time in service they move quickly through the cabin,” she said.

Richard Dawood, a specialist in travel medicine at Fleet Street Clinic in London, said airlines should not allow anyone to travel who was obviously ill.

“It’s a contravention of airline regulations for someone who’s showing overt signs of infection to be allowed to travel in the first place,” he said.

He said the best way travellers could protect themselves was by asking someone to wear a face mask.

“You could escalate it to captain level and say, ‘here’s a person who’s a danger to other passengers and they should wear a face mask’. However, you could end up with a pretty nasty incident if someone digs in their heels,” he said.

The research was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.