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My wife gets sick pretty easily by being near other sick people. She’s gotten sick four or five times in the past year and a half. Each time was either during or directly after a trip we went on. It has happened so many times in a row now that she’s afraid to travel long distances because more than likely she’ll get sick.

I’m fortunate to have a pretty good immune system. I lived in Boston most of last year and survived some pretty brutal weather. I was around a bunch of sick people in classrooms and conference rooms and didn’t even get the sniffles. I haven’t gotten sick in three years…until recently. I was flying to Las Vegas for a conference and started filling ill shortly after I got there. It wasn’t a bad cold, but enough to make my two week trip uncomfortable.

There is only one thing we’ve found in common with the illnesses my wife and I have had for the past two years: air travel. Of course, part of the problem with trying to identify the source of an illness is that you can’t be 100% sure what caused it. Common reasons for getting sick include being around other sick people (airborne germs) or touching your mouth, nose or eyes after touching an infected person or thing. My wife and I have become pretty fanatical when it comes to washing our hands and using antibacterial cleaner while traveling, so we are skeptical that would be the cause. We’ve come to the conclusion that being on an airplane is more than likely the reason. It only makes sense, right? An airplane has a large number of people in tight quarters all breathing the same air.

There should be more studies to see the effect of air travel on the dispersal of illnesses in the population. I can envision a social networking application that allows people to associate illnesses with potential causes/places/times. Of course there would be some false positives (identifying the cause as air travel when it really wasn’t), but I bet distinct patterns would emerge. Wouldn’t it be interesting to know that you weren’t the only person to get sick shortly after a recent flight you took? I know if I got sick with my good immune system on a plane recently, there had to have been others that got sick too. I wonder if we’d see crazy things like half of the passengers on the plane got sick? I wouldn’t be too surprised.

Turns out that there have been some studies on the effect of air travel on the spread of the flu. Specifically, scientists found that 9/11 caused the 2001 flu season to be delayed by two weeks. I bet the results of a larger scale test would be even more shocking. Imagine all of the wasted productivity due to catching a cold from a plane.

What can do you to protect yourself? You can take a bunch of vitamins, but that hasn’t helped my wife much. This website suggests a layered approach. Wear a mask with a dampened hankie inside the mask. That would make for a fun 4 hour flight!

At the end of the day, there are no guarantees. The airlines and the FAA really need to look at this problem and figure out better ways to clean the air or they need to be more receptive to ill passengers rebooking their flights (at minimal cost). Last year my wife was very ill during the middle of one of our trips and the airline would not let her rebook her flight without a huge penalty.

There’s no telling how many people get sick because of that policy.