Listen, it's hard to maintain social
distancing anywhere,
but especially on an airplane.
Just thinking about it freaks
me out.
Recently United Airlines tried to
implement distancing by announcing that
they are "automatically blocking
middle seats to give passengers enough
space on board." But on May 9th a
passenger on board a United flight to
San Francisco from Newark tweeted out
this picture in which middle seats are
clearly occupied. The tweet sparked
predictable backlash and prompted
demands to leave seats empty on
airplanes.
But as the number of daily travelers slowly picks up again after the unprecedented drop in March
airlines like United will find it harder and
harder to leave seats empty on their flights.
So all this debate over the middle seat
makes me wonder: How far can an
infectious disease actually spread on an
airplane even if we block the middle
seat?
And if we do block that seat, are our ticket prices going to go up?
I'm Cleo Abram and this is
Answered, by Vox.
This is a visualization of the inside of
a Boeing 767.
It shows how a single cough can spread throughout a plane between
air filtration cycles.
When I cough like this,
you know, it definitely generates
a lot of droplets.
That's Professor Yan Chen. He helped create this
animation to study the ways infectious
diseases in cough droplets can spread to
other passengers. Due to the airflow
design in most commercial planes those
cough droplets are first carried upwards
and then travel sideways through the
cabin.
A longitudinal air flow, which
means it's between rows, is minimal,
and therefore is much more dangerous to
get the those droplets if you sit in
the same row rather than in a different row.
But the model does not
completely rule out transmission to
people in different rows. In this
simulation, all these people around the
passenger are at risk.
In fact, those airborne cough droplets
can move even farther down the cabin
if another passenger walks by the
individual that's coughing.
This second
simulation shows how that can happen.
Air movement created by the walker can
carry the droplet down the aisle to a
completely different part of the plane.
When you walk around, there's a possibility to get the disease or you
might not get it but you might bring
it to your fellow passengers.
And to
make matters worse,
cough droplets can land on all the
surfaces we touch.
Those droplets didn't go to you directly.
Properly just go to the
tray table, armrest,  even head rest,
or the seat back in front of me.
But despite all these models
Dr. Chen says it remains hard for
scientists to predict exactly how a
virus would spread on a plane or whether
leaving a middle seat empty would
actually help protect us.
He uses this
reconstruction of a Boeing 737 flight
from Hong Kong to Beijing to illustrate
his point.
On March 15th 2003 a man
seated in 14E was carrying the SARS
virus. During the flight 22 other
passengers and crew became infected.
While data on this flight is incomplete
at least five people are known to have
died.
So majority of them just sat within
these three rows before and three rows
behind but you definitely see some of
those who sat pretty far away.
There's two persons seated seven rows
in front of this infected person on
the other side who were also getting infected.
Dr. Chen says this flight
has been widely studied but
epidemiologists still struggle to
explain exactly how the virus spread so
far through the length of the cabin.
So I cannot guarantee that our animation is a
one hundred percent scientifically proven 
result.
What does your simulation tell us about
the effectiveness of blocking middle
seats to passengers?
By leaving the 
middle seat open you will have a little
bit more social distancing. But if you
look at our animation
isn't not very helpful.
So even if middle seats were open in this simulation,
it wouldn't do much to stop
cough droplets from reaching you.
Still, according to Dr. Chen, an open middle
seat could be helpful if paired with
other precautions.
So if I were a
passenger and the airline can guarantee that the middle seat is open
I don't think I have a problem to go
there with my surgical mask.
Surgical masks can reduce the distance cough 
droplets travel from around six feet to
more like two feet and combined with an
empty middle seat they might actually 
 reduce risk.
Dr. Chen says an open middle seat could
help in another really important way:
Limiting the total number of people on
any given flight. But that could present
a different problem when it comes to how
much our flights will cost.
The airline
industry operates on very thin margins.
John Grant is an analyst at OAG, an
organization that tracks global flight data.
Probably only 20 airlines in the
world consistently make a profit.
Whoah!
- Yeah. - I did not realize that!
If you're
leaving every middle seat empty that's
30% of your capacity that you're not
selling.
According to Grant that could
mean a whopping 52% increase in average
ticket price for passengers.
Will the person sitting in New York today who
wants to fly to Florida next week be
prepared to pay 52 percent more?
No! Honestly, no.
And particularly now, after nine weeks of lockdown,
Less cash
at home etc etc
Listen, the concern about
the middle seat makes sense. Until we
have a vaccine for the coronavirus
flying is gonna be kind of scary. But
while we can take precautions like
wearing a mask or leaving an empty
middle seat, in the end we might have to
decide how much we're willing to pay for
a slight bump in safety.
Thanks for watching!
That was an episode of Vox's first ever
daily show.
It's called Answered, it's on a new
streaming app called Quibi and every
day we take on a question about what's
happening in the world right now from
the history of curfews to cicada season
so if you want to check out more all you
need to do is go to the link in the
description or download the Quibi app on
your phone and search for Vox or
Answered.
I'll be there every day.
