A few weeks ago, I found myself the victim of flights from hell. My first flight was cancelled, leaving me driving home late at night, only to wake again for a red-eye the next morning. That was cancelled as well, with the second replacement delayed by a further hour. All in all I ended up spending a good ten hours extra in the airport surrounded by tired, sick, and coughing individuals, and ended up a full 16 hours late to my destination. On the return, I’d again tangle with delays, and by the weekend’s close, I’d contracted a nasty flu for my trouble.
All this had me riled up and looking for revenge. I had lost hours of my life to these frustrations, and the respiratory havoc claimed a further week of my working life. It had me realizing that we could surely improve the performance and hygiene of our airliners with a simple idea: a website called Flights From Hell.
Clean Up Your Act
The concept of Flights From Hell is simple. Let’s say you catch a flight, get home, and the next day, you realize you caught something from the plane. You point your browser at Flights From Hell, and punch in your flight number, departure time, and your seat allocation in the plane. You then log what you think you caught on the plane, be it COVID-19, the flu, the common cold, or whatever. Ideally, thousands of passengers on thousands of flights will do the same, and it could all be tied up in a neat little bow by hooking it up with already-existing flight data APIs.
So far, so simple, right? But there’s a magic to it. First things first, it becomes a useful tool for tracking the spread of airborne diseases. Imagine finding a single hot flight from Chicago to Dallas Fort Worth, and then looking at how infected passengers then spread communicable diseases all over the country on their connecting flights. There’s potential value in this from a disease control perspective.
More so, though, it could be used as a agitating tool to improve air travel. Monthly statistics could be collated to determine the routes, airports, airplanes, and airlines most likely to get you sick. Maybe sitting in a 737 by the emergency exit is a particular hotspot for catching something. Maybe a certain airline performs poorly, and routinely sees more passengers getting off ill than its rivals.
Suddenly, there’s another factor at play when you’re booking your next flight. In the back of your mind, you’re thinking that the budget carrier you usually use just got a really bad rating last month on Flights From Hell. Checking the site, you note that you’re eight times less likely to get sick with a rival carrier based on past performance.
It almost doesn’t matter whether the site’s stats are a perfect predictor or not; put the data out there, and it will influence people’s decision making. Suddenly, this creates a profit motive for airlines. If they’re routinely losing ticket sales because their stats are so poor on Flights From Hell, that’s no good. Someone upstairs better come up with a plan on how to fix the problem. Maybe it’s better air filters, or a change to ventilation settings. Maybe it’s better surface cleaning practices in between flights.
In this world, the airlines are forced to compete on hygiene because the data is out there. You’ll see ads with smiling flight attendants touting the value of cleaner air and healthier flights. Airlines with a good record will boast about how thousands fewer passengers got sick on their flights versus their rivals on the same routes. At the extreme, airlines might even get serious about stopping obviously sick passengers from boarding a flight.
Of course, building a better world won’t necessarily be easy. The whole concept depends on users taking the time to submit data to a website. For those in the depths of a nasty head cold, that’s perhaps less likely unless they’re feeling particularly vitriolic towards the airline. There’s also the problem of data verification. A valid boarding pass or ticket is plenty to prove you caught a flight, but how do you prove you got sick there? Even if you’re not proving you got sick on the flight, just proving to a website you’re actually sick at all is a difficult thing to do. Photos of RAT tests can readily be faked, after all, and nobody’s going to drag themselves to a doctor for an “official test” just to help out a community project with some data collection.
Ultimately, it’s an idea with promise, but flaws. In any case, as I struggle to recover from the worst flu of my life, I just here lamenting the fact that I didn’t book with a different airline. Until Flights From Hell (HellFlights? Flightsi?) gets built, I just wish I had some way to tell the world the fate that befell me that frustrating weekend.
You don’t actually know where you picked stuff up from.
Many things have 2-3 incubation days, even things like food poisoning can have 24-48hr incubation periods and that’s directly ingested.
As someone who sneezes from light and dust I get dirty looks all the time, but I’m generally not walking around in public with an easily communicable disease.
So, one sick passenger is a fluke, and a pack of sick passengers all next to each other is an indicator. You’re right that the system does not work on the small scale but the point of such data collection is to aggregate lots of small scales into a sensible big one. The question is, what are you going to weigh with a big scale?
Exactly this.
“Someone upstairs better come up with a plan on how to fix the problem. Maybe it’s better air filters, or a change to ventilation settings. Maybe it’s better surface cleaning practices in between flights.”
Nope, their plan is going to be suing your website out of existence for trying to blame them for their other passengers’ pre-existing illnesses.
Here’s a plan to fix the problem. Depressurise the cabin. That will ensure masks are worn and only clean air is inhaled. :p
Of course a joke, but not funny. Since the last years, I know how unbearable masks are. So nobody has to force me to wear one on purpuse.
The flaw in this logic is that the cause if the diseases are the passengers, not the airlines. The most likely outcome of such website would be a return to wearing compulsory masks and the use of hand sanitizer for each passenger, which is something that a few more concerned passengers still do to this day.
The solution is simple. If you are concerned for your health, you are the one that can do something about it rather than just blaming it on the airports, airlines or plane manufacturers.
> The flaw in this logic is that the cause if the diseases are the passengers, not the airlines.
Is it, though? When you splash hundreds, if not thousands out on non-refundable plane tickets months before the flight, then wind up sick a day or two before the flight, that’s a hell of a financial hit to take.
What if airlines let people change their expensive tickets without fees?
“What if airlines let people change their expensive tickets without fees?”
Not much would change.
Besides the airline ticket, people also have vacation schedules or work schedules to meet.
If you get sick the day before your vacation, you can’t just tell your boss that you’ll be delaying your vacation for 5 days until you are feeling better.
The same with work. If you’ve got a business trip scheduled, you aren’t going to call your business partners the day before and say “Hey, I’ve got the sniffles. Let’s push that meeting back a week.”
It sucks, but it is true.
You’re not wrong – my comment was definitely an oversimplification of the issue, but even so, a big part of the cost of a given vacation is transport. To that end, I think we could start to see a change for the better.
Um, actually, depending on where you work, this is exactly what you do.
If I am sick, during vacation, that no longer counts as vaction days and I get them back to use another time. If I am sick, I’m not going to hold a physical meeting with a bunch of people if I not _absolutely_ have to.
If everything is already organized, I would cancel it only if absolutely unavoidable. I remeber a few years ago. I planed a trip to a lexture in germany (from austria, by car, not plane) and the day before i felt, I got a cold. I did not want to cancel all this, so I just went to the pharmacy and got some pills. Was no problem.
“If you get sick the day before your vacation, you can’t just tell your boss that you’ll be delaying your vacation for 5 days until you are feeling better.”
Have done this several times and continued to work remotely. Some employers are very accommodating.
You take vacation days?
‘Junkets’ are a much better way.
Vacation time is as good as cash, most employers…As long as you are changing jobs at reasonable rate.
Professional conferences are sometimes in nice places. Places that you would like to vacation.
Professional conferences don’t take attendance. Perhaps one sign in/day.
Engineers optimize processes…optimize the above.
Search ‘BOFH archive’ for ‘junket’. Many good tips.
Even if my airline lets me change out my tickets for free day of (a delusional idea which would cost them a fortune) I still would go. I have booked hotels, dinners, events. Maybe in a miracle all of those places will also let me last minute rebook (again an insane proposition that would cost them a fortune) but I would still have to do the leg work to make all that happen.
So even if all these companies are willing to lose a fortune on last minute schedule changes it still would likely encourage few to not just go.
Of course not. A couple of aspirin or paracetamol pills can solve many things :-)
Yes – other than possibly mandating masks, it’s hard to see what options the airlines really have to lower their numbers on the site. The main variables looks like they would be the number of passengers who are sick and how contagious they are, and I don’t see what airlines could do there.
Can’t fly without a doctor’s note.
Yes and I see the mask as an absolute no go. I did not fly in the time, when they were mandatory.
And a comeback of these masks would be the absolute worst case scenario which must never ever in any case happen again. No, thanks.
Compulsory masking is obviously correct.
The number of people who will do so is very small, and I don’t expect the data to be useful in that case, sadly. Love the idea, but it would need to be integrated with some larger system, perhaps the CDC’s infection tracking system could simply ask “did you fly recently? if so, throw your flight number and seat number into these blanks”. But they seem to have stopped using that, too.
The other solution is simply to not fly. I just don’t think there’s a way to do it safely. I’ve told my manger that I’d be happy to take the assignment across the country but I won’t be flying unless the company is willing to assume liability for anything caught while doing so, which of course they aren’t, so they’re welcome to pay me my regular wage while I make the trip in a rental car.
I too love the idea, but can’t see it work unless post-flight health reporting were compulsory or integrated by other means. The privacy implications are such that I hope it never happens.
It’s the slippery slope of “sharing is caring” (aka “surveillance for the greater good”) that was highlighted so well in Dave Egger’s “The Circle.” If you’re interested, it’s worth reading the book, as the movie was lousy.
Yes, I see the privacy implications absolutely the same. During the corona restrictions, the authoritites tried to get data about restaurant visits or even wanted a registration, when I went to a public saune. No thanks. If somebody really forced me to fill out the card, I invented fake data. Luckily the operators of the locations were not allowed to check ID cards.
Statistics repeatedly show that your chance of dying in a rental car trip is a hundred times greater than a long-haul flight of the same distance. Is your employer OK with that? A company I worked for prohibited such travel for that reason.
(Horrifyingly, in contrast, short-haul flight fatality rates come out about the same as driving, though. Didn’t change the dumb company policy.)
I think that’s dominated by cheap, low maintenance operators rather than by distance. If you fly using the national airline for short or long, I suspect the rates are similar per km travelled.
I always say: Upt to 1000km by car, what is farther away , i want to fly. But of course during this corona crazyness, I did not fly because of the mandatory mask.
Nope.
1. Questionable value – very few people will make use of the system (entering their flight data when they get sick.) If you are sick enough to not be able to carry out your job or your vacation, then you’ll probably be sick enough to not care about getting online and updating somebody’s database of bad flights.
2. Privacy concerns – you’ll be maintaining a database of health information about identifiable people. Do you really want to be responsible for any amount of personal health information?
Seriously. Companies should view personal information as toxic waste that they have to track and dispose of properly. It should be the last thing anybody wants to collect and store.
Agreed. Data is a liability. PII and HIPAA even more so.
You know a great many number of people feel your privacy rights while spreading disease out in the public should not be so absolute.
While I agree this random website isn’t the proper entity to be stewarding that data, there are plenty of health organizations that can and probably should.
I also don’t believe the idea here is of questionable value. Again, this random little website doing it isn’t the proper implementation of the idea, and the entities that would qualify as proper are certainly going to have more reach/coverage which I’d say is a direct fix to the problem.
I always felt the same. I can’t believe no one ever built a mandatory public database of HIV infections. After all it’s important to know so you don’t accidentally get infected right. I’m sure that you apply your lack of privacy concerns about health information and stopping the spread of communicable infections equally.
Dude…wear a rubber.
Assuming ‘Just asking’s gender?
Shame!
Ask your mate for a HIV test or wear a condom. Or do both, if you want.
No, thanks. I do not want to trade freedom for a little more security. Illnesses are a part of life. I regularly check, if vaccinations should be done, but I do not want further restriction. My privacy STANDS above some small gain in protection against disease.
You know what helps with privacy? A mask. If you are a real, thinking person and not an internet sockpuppet as your posting history on this thread suggests, you should be thanking the authorities for normalising the wearing of masks.
Maybe even a starting point is tracking air quality. I’ve been on flights and seen a few posts on Twitter/X from folks who carry CO2 monitors (often Aranet units). Could be a good indication of air exchange in the craft?
My wife’s advice (she’s a doctor) : during this time of the year, always wear a mask in crowded places (supermarket, airport, train stations, etc.) and try to be as far as you can from other people (especially those snoozing) . It works well ;-) at least much more than trying to deal with the consequences on a web site (probably not much used as many other think)
This. What a baffling over-complication a website would be. A decent well-fitting mask will cover a chunk of risk, along with decent hand hygiene. Having watched some of the incredibly unwashed mangey folk on planes, it is genuinely shocking that more people don’t get sick. Folks picking their nose then handling the seats and trays, folks coming out of the loo having not washed hands, then touching every seat on the way down the plane to steady themselves. Honestly I have to just go into my happy place when on flights, or I’d go bananas. I’m not even a clean-freak, I’m happy to be dirty and swim in sewage infested UK waters, I just can’t believe people don’t take basic hygiene steps.
And they are still alive. Luckily our body has something called an immune system (sometimes boosted by a vaccination) and does not rely on a sterile environment.
NO. The mandatory mask during the corona time just hindered me from flying. That should never ever come back. Lets just get back to the time before 2020.
Are we prepared to admit when the data ends up showing absolutely no correlation between individual flights and disease spread? Will we accept a null result?
The reality is that the plane is likely the safest part of your trip. The air is very, very dry and constantly exchanged as part of the pressurization process. It’s much more likely that you caught it in the airport itself, not on the plane.
Dry air destroys your mucous membrane protection. It’s a very well understood risk environment.
The best solution: don’t fly. I hate it. Planes are just cramped buses with wings and a unhealthy attitude. Airports are even worse. But then again, i live in the netherlands. I travel mostly by train and bike.
For some of us, it is only practical way to travel. Our kids live on the East coast and we live on the West side of the US. Not practical to drive when the flights take only part of a day to get there. More time with the kids and grand-kids. Flying isn’t that bad…. as long as connecting flights are on-time :) . Be nice to afford to ‘rent’ a private jet for those cross country flights… but that’s not in the budget…. so take the air buses instead.
Ah another Dutchie with an unhealthy belief in their transport solutions lol. As an expat in NL, I can say I fully understand the Dutch public transport and cycling ways, and sure if you can cycle your route that’s great, but the reality is that the trains are a bit of a nightmare (number of times I’ve been stranded at Schiphol late at night requiring a 70 euro taxi home is amazing) and buses are great but no better than planes for disease transmission. Plus I can’t get a train to my home country without spending 18 hours and 4x the price of a flight on it. If I want to get a bus to work in the morning it’s a 1.5 hour trip via bus routes, or it’s a 15 minute drive, or a 30 minute cycle. When I wanted to get a train to a distant Dutch town to pick up a used item from a seller I could only find a route which took 6 hours round trip vs my 2 hours in a car. Dutch folk seem to love living in a city or a town and using the facilities there, which is great, but people in the rest of the world are much more spread out and like it that way. Personally I hate cities, and none of my sports or hobbies are done in cities, and all of my family live outside NL. Trains and bikes don’t cut it.
If I want to travel to e.g. Bangkok in a sensible timeframe, then there is no alternative to flying. Although it is not much fun 10hrs in the plane as a tall guy.
I avoid trains (expensive and slow) and bikes (exhausting)
So called pandemic? I guess you didn’t know anyone personally that died from it. And no the masks weren’t to protect you, it was to protect people from you, but no you wouldn’t care about that.
Actually there were a few we know that passed away. Mostly elderly that had other health issues. When the flu hits every season, there are always those that are susceptible to viruses and some worst than others. So it goes. And yes, we eventually got it too… and got over it.
Interesting article, and comments. As someone who has just been tested covid+ve and have a 14 hour flight booked next week I have things to think about. If I go I’ll wear a mask – it’s no effort and only courteous.
14hrs wearing the mask? Feesl like torture or a gag. I could not even bear it 15 min in the subway.
What sort of sheltered life have you led if you liken 15 minutes under a mask to “torture”? There are probably people right here on hackaday who have experienced real torture at the hands of the Stasi or similar. Ask them which they would prefer.
Saying airplane is just a crowded bus in the sky is pretty tone-deaf to actual people that ride buses or other public transportation daily for financial, ecological or philosophical reasons.
.
For all the HaD eco-warriors that say everyone should sell their car and ride bikes and take the bus… would you recommend taking a crossed stinky bus cross country? Or Amtrak or your country’s equivalent? Is that infectious disease risk way less magically?
I would love to have cross country train access easily accessible. We have friends who live in Memphis, TN that are originally from Chicago, IL. They can get on an Amtrak after work Friday, and be in Chicago on Sat AM and just sleep like normal w/out having to drive themselves. Spend the weekend w/ family, then leave Sunday night, get off the train in time to head direct to work on Monday.
I would happily trade a 4.5 hour train ride from my town to the next major towns I regularly visit that take 3 hours to drive now instead. Train accessibility just isn’t that prevalent unfortunately, and you can’t completely close yourself off from your neighbors or get a ‘sleeping car’ for overnight travel on a bus.
So I am no eco warrior and avoid buses and trains. Either the car or if it is too far for that, than it is also too far for the train and I fly.
It’s becoming the norm. I think some of the newer writers don’t understand the concept… But i don’t think Lewin is new, so this garbage must be coming from the top.
I think it’s a really weird perspective on blaming whoever for people carrying microbes around, some of which have the potential to cause illness to a certain fraction of the population.
Everybody carries millions of different microbes in their body. Some of them are a prerequisite for human existence, others just happen to lurk around and, others are potentially lethal. Our immune system (individual as well as collective) gets trained to this environment, sometimes causing adverse effects on our health or convenience. If you try and stop training your (our) immune system, the hits will be less by number but harder by extent. Nature has its order, implemented in all creatures down to the microscopic level. All of these play together, and human society cannot exist without exchanging microbes. The microbes are existing probably millions of years longer than we are, so I suggest that we can’t escape them, no matter how hard we try. I think the Covid Pandemic is a very good example of seeing that happen.
Fear is hardly ever a good advocate in deciding what’s best for society. Unfortunately, it is common these days that people believe that you can solve any problem with the right app, while many of these apps just create much more problems for society than the one they possibly solve.
So true. I would like to turn back time before this Covid craziness, where nobody thought about wearing a mask or rubbing his hands with disinfectant until the skin gets dry.
I enjoyed the concept brainstorm. Our last international trip in October we participated in an anonymous study in the airport (just outside customs) that was attempting to track positivity and potentially new variants arising abroad.
Relying on others to do the right thing (stay home when sick, install superior air filtration systems, cover their mouth when they sneeze, etc.) is never gonna cut it. You need to look out for number one. Wear a mask. Wash your hands. All that stuff. And be okay with the fact that the best you can hope for is to maybe catch fewer things in the long run.
Wearing a mask is just no option. It hinders breathing and communication, in the right weather the eyeglasses fog up, you can stumble more easily. Just, no!
I believe there was a study indicating masks were effectively useless for preventing disease spread. They do improve sterility somewhat in an operating room, however
I’d be interested to read that study if you happen to have it handy. Any claim that masks can prevent the spread of disease are of course not true. But I’d be surprised if the spread of disease isn’t at least slightly reduced. I mean, it has to be similar to the difference between sneezing directly into someone’s face, as opposed to not.
Two ideas. 1. turn on the air to blow in your face. It goes through a HEPA filter on its way through the system, so many/most bugs are taken out along the way. 2. wear a mask. It also helps moisten the dry air in the cabin.
That has been my procedure every flight since COVID hit. N95 from the moment I enter the airport until I leave the destination airport (and then masking as much as possible at the destination).
I have to say back in June I was about the only person in a mask, and this time around there were a noticeably higher percentage of maskers. Maybe 15%? Better than zero. But no pilots or crew masked.
I’d be worried about any pilot with that level of anxiety.
Nothing against crazy people, just not as ATP.
The mandatory masks were the reason not to fly. How did you live before these masks came up?
Certainly lived before the masks came up, but was sick more often while doing that living. ;) But not stumbling as often from fogged up glasses.
Don’t let Ryanair see this, they’ll charge £19.99 extra for the privilege of not catching a disease.
And drop the problematic connections. Without regulations forcing airlines to provide service at all/certain locations that is what is going to happen.
FYI the air quality in plane cabins is actually more than decent. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldm3n0hEsd4
Interesting Idea, but probably a privacy nightmare.
But while ranting about flight/delays/airlines;
At least in the EU, we got the right to compensation if your final destination reach is delayed by a certain amount. You individually claim that to the airline and they sometimes (often) try to make up a reason that would free them from the obligation to pay (something out of their control, acto of good, realy bad weather, etc). You can go through other channels then, and more often than not I got my claim granted and my compensation. I feel there should be an obligation to the airlines, once they lied to you and a claim has been verified externally, to contact every passenger affected and pay them their compensation money. Instead everybody has to file the claim themselves and go through externals if they deny it.
Can we make this obligation a thing please? I really don’t like airlines lying to me.
There are tons of meetings that cannot be remote. I’m a lover of remote working, but it’s just not possible to inspect hardware, get a good human interaction over a coffee, chat about stuff you don’t want recorded etc via Teams. It’s not a bad thing to strive for better conditions.
You take the plane for a cup of coffee ?
Hardware inspection can be done using cameras. Teams (video) chats are not recorded by default. Human Interaction?!?!! Nah, Human Interaction should be kept to a minimum…
“Maybe it’s better air filters, or a change to ventilation settings. Maybe it’s better surface cleaning practices in between flights.”
NONE of those air-based methods would work.
Copper alloy (ex., brass) plated handles on public doors would – the surface tears apart even viruses.
This also would if used in public spaces: far-UVC, a wavelength of ultraviolet light which can kill superbugs safely in the air and on surfaces without penetrating our skin. However, I’m sure all the the hugely powerful over-the-counter and prescription meds companies would do whatever they could to stop this if proved to be entirely safe:
Intro to Far-UV
https://itsairborne.com/intro-to-far-uv-7bcfae7a0cbb
Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a lightbulb that you could install, it wouldn’t have any bad effects on people and still be able to kill airborne pathogens, like viruses?
We’ve been using UV for over a century to kill pathogens, but the standard UV that is used with low pressure mercury lamps (254 nm) can hurt people if they are exposed. You can’t just shine it in an occupied room. A newer way of producing UV has opened up new possibilities to create safe indoor spaces.
TED Talk:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YATYsgi3e5A
If it wasn’t for UV, the earth would be covered in planet smegma.
But yellow eye is dangerous.
Best to live in basement.
Only come out at night.
Doesn’t this create ozone? Ozone at ground level is an irritant.
I have one thing to say: my 93 year-old Cardiologist and Cardiovascular Surgeon who graduated from Yale University, said the only time he ever officially got influenza in his life was in an airplane. This is a man who loved his work so much he didn’t care about his money or car. He drove one car until you could see the road through the holes in the floor of his car. His wife has bought him and his three daughters a nice house etc but he didn’t care about all that and for him his life was cardiology. Imagine how much time he spent inside hospitals and his office which was in the hospital and he never got the flu at work but on an airplane. Come on, better cleaning, antimicrobial surfaces, and most of all constantly flowwing HEPA filters that when a person coughs or sneezes is near enough to suck those particles up. The bathrioms are absolutely nasty by the end of every flight on ever airline except when I would at one time in my life flight on Singapore Air often as well as a budget carrier, Air Asia. All the planes were immaculate from take off to landing and I know they must have steam cleaned the interior before each flight. Plus on Air Asia, the idea is “woke” doesn’t apply to flight attendants make or female as they all wear skin tight jeans and will sit down next to you for a chat if there is a seat and time.
How do you ‘officially’ get influenza?
Is there a committee?
I know that now, they can detect DNA, but 93…
My mom was a preschool teacher.
Worked 40+ years without a single sick day. Literally. Ran own school, no real backup.
It’s not that her immune system is her super-power, she is wrong about that.
She’s just tough.
Doctor told her, after the fact, based on EKGs, that she had a mild heart attack on one of those ‘not sick’ days.
No doubt uncounted, mild, colds and flus.
That she spread far and wide while ‘feeling fine’.
My guess is that “officially getting influenza” means catching one of the bugs that totally kicks your ass and makes you feel like you are going to die for several days. I’ve luckily never been that sick myself. I would hope that most of us have never really been that sick.
Waiiiiiiit a minute.
Highly paid doctors have REPEATEDLY SAID that masks prevent the spread of viruses.
You aren’t an anti- “The Science(tm)” activist are you? The kind who doesn’t just BELIEVE in “The Science(tm)?”
Straight to the No-Fly list with you!
Thanks for your article, now I feel as though I did not spend 2 years surrounded by morons for nothing.
I think that could become a boomerang when airlines set out extra restrictions to gain “health-points” or worst case demand passengers to wear a mask. I did not fly in the corona time because of the masks and i hope that this horrific experiences from that time will never repeat.
Of course it is bad, if you get an illness, but such restrictions are worse.