Study finds that 94% of air travelers would want health authorities to contact them if they have been exposed to a serious contagious disease on an airplane

Jul 21 2004

A new study by the Harvard School of Public Health Project on the Public and Biological Security finds that the vast majority (94%) of air travelers would want public health authorities to contact them if they might have been exposed to a serious contagious disease on an airplane.

Large majorities of Americans who fly domestically or internationally are willing to provide information that would help public health officials contact them in such an event.

Currently, international air travelers are required to provide emergency contact information and a large majority are willing to continue doing so. Nearly nine in ten Americans who travel internationally (89%) would be willing to give the airlines the name and telephone number of someone who could be contacted in case of an emergency. Similarly, about nine in ten (88%) of those international air travelers who take a cell phone, pager, or hand-held wireless email when they fly are willing to provide the phone or pager number or email address for these devices. Nearly three-fourths (73%) are willing to provide the addresses and telephone numbers of the places they are going. Overall, 89% of international fliers are willing to provide one or more type of contact information, 7% are unwilling to provide any, and 4% don’t know.

Domestic air travelers are not currently required to provide emergency contact information, but most of them are willing to. The proportion of domestic travelers willing to provide such information is nearly identical to that of international travelers. Overall, 93% are willing to provide one or more type of contact information, 5% are unwilling to provide any, and 2% don’t know.

These findings are based on interviews conducted June 4-8, 2004, with 1,006 adults nationwide, including 633 domestic fliers (Americans who take one or more domestic flights within the U.S. per year) and 240 international fliers (Americans who take one or more international flights per year).

“The combination of possible threats of bioterrorism carried out on airplanes and newly emerging infectious diseases has left most Americans willing to cooperate with public health authorities who need emergency contact information to head off the spread of dangerous diseases,” said Robert J. Blendon, Professor of Health Policy and Political Analysis at the Harvard School of Public Health and director of the project.

The worldwide SARS epidemic last year highlighted the difficulties public health officials can have in notifying airline passengers quickly. Their experience was that, once passengers left the airport, it was very difficult to contact those who might have been exposed to SARS. This raised the question of what could been done to make such contacts easier.

About half of domestic (52%) and international air travelers (50%) believe that public health authorities today can quickly obtain air passengers’ emergency contact information to warn them about possible exposure to a serious contagious disease.