Taking the centre seat on a flight may be a thing of the past, if new academic research has anything to do with it. And, quite frankly, we’re not going to disagree with the idea.

A new academic study has found that leaving the middle seat empty on flights decreases your risk of catching COVID-19 by 79%.

So, if you do choose to fly during the pandemic, you’ll be much safer if you opt for an airline that has a policy of leaving the centre seat empty. Such a move lowers the risk that you’ll contract COVID-19 by almost eighty percent, from 1 in 4,400 to 1 in 7,300.

The conclusion comes from Statistics Professor Arnold Barnett at the MIT Sloan School of Management, whose findings suggest that airlines who opt for a “no middle seat” policy can reduce COVID-19 transmission risk by 79%.

Barnett does note, however, that your risk of dying from contracting COVID on a flight are less than 1 in 500,000. He also warns that his research should be taken with a grain of salt, acknowledging that his findings are “rough conjecture” due to the difficulties in calculating such a risk.

His calculations took a number of other factors into account, including the assumption that all passengers on board would be wearing masks (a move which he says reduces COVID risk by 82%) and that people are more likely to catch coronavirus from someone in the same aisle as them, rather than from a passenger seated in front or behind them.

It’s also worth noting that the new research fails to take into account other behaviour on-board which may contribute to a passengers risk or catching coronavirus, such as using the restroom, boarding and disembarking from the flight.

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