According to science, choosing the right seat on a plane might be the easiest way for you to stay healthy. A new study shows that picking the window seat, and staying put for the whole flight, minimizes the chances of you coming into contact with a sick passenger and picking up the pathogens yourself. The paper, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday, said that people seated along the aisle are most likely to encounter potentially ill passengers or crew members, which possibly increases their chances of infection. Though this might seem obvious, this study is among the first to look specifically at how disease spreads on airplanes, writes Time. The researchers behind the study traveled on 10 domestic flights, which lasted between 3.5 and five hours each. During so, they only observed one person actively coughing. Swabbing and testing seatbelt buckles also did not turn up evidence of any of 18 different respiratory-illness-causing viruses on any of the planes. Researchers were able to create disease transition models using the passengers’ movement patterns and what scientists already know about how illnesses spread.
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