Passengers will likely notice other changes, including limited security lane usage and TSA agents changing gloves after each pat-down. And because many people have been unable to renew their driver’s licenses, the TSA is accepting licenses that expired on or after March 1, 2020.
Will circulating air in a plane make me sick?As with American, Southwest, and Delta, among others, Frontier’s airplanes have been equipped with hospital-grade high-efficiency particulate air filters, which filter out 99.9% of dust particles, bacteria and viruses. Filene said that every three minutes, air on any given aircraft is fully exchanged.
And while this may sound like an excellent solution, Adalja said air circulation on planes is a fairly common misperception.
“When you see an outbreak on an airplane, it’s not that everyone breathing the air gets infected with it. It’s the people that are in the seat beside you and the seat in front of you. That’s what it is. If this was an air problem, you would see much wider outbreaks on a plane. And this is a droplet-spread virus (where) the droplets travel about 6 feet or so and fall to the ground.”
In fact, airplane ventilation system requirements meet CDC-recommended levels for use with COVID-19 patients in airborne infection isolation rooms, wrote Joseph Allen, an assistant professor of exposure assessment science at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, in an opinion piece for The Washington Post.
When asked if he would take a flight these days, Adalja responded, “I would go without any hesitation.” However, he was quick to note that in caring for patients with COVID-19 daily, going on a plane would be less of a personal risk for him.
The New York Times recently surveyed epidemiologists on activities they would consider doing during the coronavirus era. Out of 511 participants, 20% said they would travel by plane this summer; 44% would do so in three months to one year; 37% would fly in over a year; and less than 1% said they would never fly again.
“No one is going to find 100% percent safety with any activity that they do until there’s a vaccine,” Adalja said. “But I do think that there have been measures put in place in airports all around the country as well as on planes that really limit the risk as much as you can and still operate.”
Christopher CicchielloChristopher Cicchiello is a writer at TODAY.com. You can find him on Instagram.