A military-led study has shown there’s a low risk for commercial airline passengers to contract an airborne virus like COVID-19 — no matter where you sit.
The study was led by U.S. Transportation Command, the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency and Air Mobility Command, and was posted Thursday by Military.com.
According to the military news outlet, researchers found that because of sophisticated air particle filtration and ventilation systems on two types of Boeing aircraft tested — the 767-300 and 777-200 — airborne particles in the cabins had a very short lifespan.
“The favorable results are attributable to a combination of the airframes' high air exchange rates, coupled with the high efficiency particulate air … filtration recirculation systems, and the downward airflow ventilation design which results in rapid dilution and purging of the disseminated aerosol particles," Vice Adm. Dee Mewbourne, deputy commander of TRANSCOM, said during a virtual roundtable, Military.com reported.
DARPA teamed up with biodefense company Zeteo Tech, scientific research company S3i and the University of Nebraska's National Strategic Research Institute for the trials. Industry partners included Boeing and United Airlines. The study was funded by TRANSCOM.
"All areas on both aircraft proved to be extremely effective in dispersing and filtering out the aerosol particles," said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Joseph Pope. "So specifically, can I tell you to sit in seat XYZ? No; they all performed very well."
During the August tests, analysts released two types of aerosols that had specific DNA signatures. The tagged fluorescent tracers allowed for researchers to better follow their distribution path, both in flight and on the ground, Military.com reported.
The particles were quickly diluted and only remained detectable for fewer than six minutes on average, TRANSCOM said in the report. By comparison "a typical American home takes around 90 minutes to clear these types of particles from the air," the command said.
Even passengers on long-haul flights wouldn't be able to pick up a sufficient viral load under the test conditions, the news outlet reported.
Mannequins representing passengers were positioned throughout the aircraft, some wearing masks and some without.
During the simulated cough tests, masked mannequins showed a "very, very large reduction in aerosol that would come out of [them], greater than 95% for most cases," David Silcott of S3i and one of the authors of the report said, Military.com reported.
"It definitely showed the benefit of wearing a mask inflight from these tests."
In the testing, however, the scientists didn't try to simulate passengers moving around the cabin, moving around to switch locations or turning toward one another to have a conversation.
"While ... we're very encouraged by the results, that's part of the reason why we're making the results public, and sharing them with the scientific community so that that follow-on research can be done," Pope said.
© 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.