Air China Flight 112

Air China Flight 112 carried a 72 year old man infected with SARS on 15 March 2003, who was the source of infection to at least another 21 passengers, resulting in the spread of SARS north to inner Mongolia and south to Thailand. The incident was not typical but demonstrated how a single person could spread disease via air travel.

The incident

A man, aged 72, had visited family in Hong Kong and was travelling home to Beijing on flight 112. When in Hong Kong, he had visited his unwell niece at the Prince of Wales Hospital, where he was exposed to SARS. Unwell when boarding the flight, he sat in seat 14E and became the source of infection to another 21 passengers and crew members. Passengers upto seven rows away from him were affected. Stewardess Meng Chungyun, age 27, travelled home to Mongolia where she infected her mother, father, brother, doctor and husband Li Ling, who later died. Stewardess Fan Jingling, also travelled back home to Mongolia and together both stewardesses became the source of infection for almost 300 people in Mongolia. Also on the flight were four employees of an engineering company who became unwell on reaching Taiwan. The flight was carrying 35 tourists from Hong Kong, 10 of which became unwell on return to Hong Kong. An official from the Chinese ministry of commerce was a passenger who fell ill in Bangkok. On 23 March, he returned to Beijing, sitting next to Pekka Aro, a Finnish official at the International Labour Organisation in Geneva, who was going to Beijing in preparation for a China employment forum. He became ill on 28 March and was admitted to hospital on 2 April. He was the first foreign national to die from SARS in China.

The whole incident was atypical. Infection typically spreads at the destination but is rarely spread on flight. The air in the cabin is cleaned using High efficiency particulate air (HEPA), in a similar way as cleaning the air in an operating theatre. The greatest risk is sitting next to or in the three rows in front or behind. In the first five months that SARS spread rapidly, 27 people had been infected on flight, of which 22 were on Air China Flight 112.

See also

Timeline of the SARS outbreak