Prognosis
Covid Risk Is Greater If Passengers Board Planes Back to Front
- Delta Air Lines among carriers to seat travelers at rear first
- Change is twice as risky as boarding at random, study finds
Boarding passengers seated at the back of the aircraft first -- a Covid-era change by Delta Air Lines Inc. and others to cut the risk of infection -- actually increases the chance of catching the virus by 50%, a scientific study showed.
So-called back-to-front boarding is also twice as risky as letting passengers on at random, even though it does reduce exposure between seated passengers and those walking down the plane, according to the study published Wednesday in the Royal Society Open Science journal. The higher risk comes from closer contact between passengers in the same rows clustering in the aisle as they stow their luggage.