Originally Posted by
Ollie Onion
I thought this was good news, you take a bunch of highly infectious symptomatic passengers and put them on a 5 hour flight with 200 plus other people with NO precautions and only 11 other people pick up the virus, they may have picked it up at the airport in the departure lounge, during boarding or disembarking etc, what it shows is that aircraft are not the incubators in the sky many claimed and with extra cleaning, hand washing, lack of service and mask wearing they probably are extremely low risk environments. That long haul study showed after an 8 hour flight a highly infectious person only infected those sat directly around him, once again this was before precautions were being taken.
Precisely what I was thinking. 11 highly infectious pax got on, infected another 11. That could have happened anywhere inside the terminal at both ends rather than the aircraft itself. How does this compare to clusters that appear from pubs/clubs/restaurants? Very favourably I'd imagine. Another thing that get overlooked is that the air is a mix of 50% fresh and 50% re-circulated on an aircraft which equates to all the air being replaced every 2-3 minutes on a narrowbody. How fresh is the air at a gym or while seated indoor at a cafe/restaurant?
Make your own conclusions, those who choose to live in fear will never live.