Airplanes Don't Make You Sick, but Airports Do

Joseph Allen, a professor of exposure assessment science at Harvard's school of public health, had an interesting commentary in a recent Washington Post. He convinced me that people don't get sick from flying on airplanes, which is a common belief among people who fly a lot, and one that I held myself until now.

It seems like an obvious idea: you're siting in a tight space for hours sharing air with a bunch of people. It must be a germ factory, right?

Well, no. Allen is pretty convincing that airplanes are much safer places to be than almost anywhere else when it comes to transferring germs, particularly airborne germs. I'm sure he's correct.

But here's the thing, and he acknowledges this: among other aspects of modern air travel, airports are great places to spread disease. And you can't really fly without spending hours in an airport unless you're a multimillionaire who's driven onto the tarmac to your waiting private jet. Plus traveling through different climates and time zones disrupts sleep, and that has an obviously negative effect on immunity.

Allen lists a bunch of ways that airports could be modified so they are less likely to be transmission factories, many of which sound expensive as retrofits. Others sound like they will make flying even less pleasant than it already is, especially the suggestion that no one should be able to leave their gate area except to use the restroom.

Here's another concept: just don't fly. There are lots of other good reasons not to.