Plane etiquette… lurgy

Air flow rates on aircraft are very high, also air enters from above and is removed at floor level. I suspect people are getting sick from the terminal with lots of people and a very low flow of air, or on transport to the airport.

If I had a cold on a plane would I wear a mask? No.

If someone had a cold on a plane would I expect them to wear a mask? Also no.

As I said its luck of the draw regards who you are sitting near.

Its not the same though as breathing in the same air for hours, which is what people always quote which is frankly 100% wrong.

The more modern the aircraft the better the systems. The newer wide bodies replace the whole cabin air (with fresh) in minutes for the duration of the flight.

So if you had flights booked for long awaited holiday or to visit family, and came down with cold the day before, you’d cancel and stay home, or else call netjets?

To use an older idiom - chinny reckon!

I still remember flying to NZ years ago, where both Mrs Lima and I were so horribly ill... Didn't even stay awake for take off!

I'd have happily postponed then, but travel insurance wouldn't pay, airline wouldn't change anything etc... And that's still the case, and imagine the logistics involved if you could shift flights and hotels because of a lurgy!? It'd be chaos!

They don't help the wearer, but they DO help people around the wearer (IYSWIM)

Covid, cold, flu etc are all airborne. Once out of your mouth, they aerosolise (is that a word?) very quickly as the (too-heavy-to-be airborne) droplets of saliva/mucus you cough out break up as they go through the air. At which point they hang around, and in a closed environment are quite likely to be breathed-in by someone else. This is why masks got a bad rap during Covid...once it was proved Covid was properly airborne, only FFP3-grade masks had the required filtration level, and how many people want to shell-out for expensive masks and take the time to fit them properly???


BUT...what a mask does (almost any mask) is catch those droplets as they're being coughed/sneezed out, while they're still too big to aerosolise, and therefore stop them from getting out and stop them from aerosolising. This is the principle behind all the Asian mask wearing even pre-Covid - "I am being a responsible citizen and not sharing my germs". And also why it's never really caught on in the West, where most people are a lot less socially-minded. But it IS valid science.


It's essentially game theory - if everyone wore masks in public spaces, we'd genuinely have minimal transmission of Covid/cold/flu/etc. But as soon as a fair minority of people stop, then it's not worth anyone else wearing one either. And as your average Brit couldn't give a monkeys, it was always doomed to fail.

As someone who has a young child, and who has a brother & friends with young children, it is sometimes a tricky decision, or a balancing act, between trying to stop them getting ill, or doing nothing and letting them being ill for weeks and weeks, which then passes to everyone else. Parents, grandparents, other kids, then back to them again... It can get exhausting at times with whole families being stuck down with every single illness the children bring home from nurseries, friends, and playgroups. My parents are in their 70's, and they look after mine and my brothers kids a couple of days per week, and have basically spent the last 4+ years being ill on and off from nursery colds, viruses, bugs, conjunctivitis, and so on, all brought home by the children.

I absolutely agree that children should build up an immune response by being ill, catching colds, playing in the soil, playing with pets, and so on, and this is the approach we take, but I can fully understand why some people might make their kids wash their hands, use sanitiser, and stay away from ill people.

I've said it before on PH and I know that not everyone agrees with me - I literally don't understand why "normal" aircraft have seats that recline. There just isn't enough room in planes where there's the standard allocation of leg room. I'm just under 6 feet tall and I get a bit miffed when the person in front of me does it. And I like to think I'm a very tolerant person.

All very well those saying upgrade or suffer someone reclining, but upgrades are expensive and beyond what many can afford.

Reclining annoys me massively. On my last flight the father and daughter in front reclined immediately. What bugs me is the kid was about 10 years old so no need whatsoever to recline. That's 6ft3 me boxed in for 7 hours. I actually think people don't realise / think how much it impacts those behind. Especially if they're not tall.

And despite this I won't recline as I feel terrible for the people behind. I guess I'm too nice - I've never reclined.

And here is the typical "I'm alright Jack" attitude of your modern Brit.

Influenza kills c.20,000 people a year in this country, and hospitalises a multiple of that figure.

Should anyone over (say) 70 or 75 stop travelling because they can't risk other s being anti-social?
...and what about the immunocompromised?
...or those with existing respiratory conditions?

Should an entire swathe of more vulnerable people lock themselves away because selfish tts like you feel you should be able to cough and sneeze freely whenever you're in public?


I have sympathy with Kermit's point above, but as Lord M says, there's a balancing act involved. And many employers still aren't particularly understanding of / sympathetic towards parents - "what, you're ill again?!? Your child's been sent home from Nursery? Can't someone else look after them...."