Identifying the Safest Seat in Aircraft: Modelling Infection Risk for 70 Different Source Locations

Abstract

Airborne diseases regularly cause pandemic outbreaks, such as the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Infection risk modeling can help identify transmission hotspots and evaluate countermeasures before they potentially affect the lives of millions of people. For this reason, many attempts at infection risk modeling have been made. However, the index person (source) is typically placed in a fixed location, which raises the question of how the index person's location affects the risk of infection for people in the vicinity. In the present study, we apply our previously introduced infection risk model and obtain infection risks for the index person sitting in all possible 70 seats in a Do728 aircraft cabin. Our results show that window seats are generally safer for healthy individuals. However, infected individuals occupying window seats pose a higher threat to their fellow passengers. Possible implications are that people with suspected or confirmed infection should avoid window seats.