Ülle Parm, Grete Must, Kätlin Kindsiko, Anna-Liisa Tamm
Objective: Because of the increasing use of air travel and the increased mobility of people, different health conditions may arise during the trip in the flight cabin or in the destination country. We aimed to determine the health conditions/problems associated with air travel and stays in a foreign country.
Methods: The research included an electronic questionnaire completed by 1014 Estonian residents who travelled by plane during the last five years on holiday and/or on a cultural trip.
Results: Health disorders occurred mostly during long trips of 1-4 hours, and the main health problems during plane travel were earaches, headaches, and flatulence. Fear of flying occurred in nearly in a third of the subjects on both short- and long-distance flights. It manifested in episodes of tachycardia and pre-travel insomnia. To cope with these situations, female passengers preferred to listen to music, and male passengers preferred to consume alcohol. In total, 59 different countries were visited, and the most frequent destinations were southern countries: Turkey, Spain, and Italy. Diarrhea, sunburn, severe headaches, fevers and flu-like symptoms were the main health problems in the destination countries. These problems were mostly caused by bad hygiene, consumption of local food, not applying sunblock creams and the change of the environment. The major share of information about the potential dangers of a trip was received from the Internet or from friends.
Conclusions: People who decide to travel by plane are usually frequent flyers, and the preferred destinations were mostly warmer climates and not very distant but also not neighbor countries. Health problems occurred most frequently during flights of medium length (1-4 hours). The frequent health disorders at destinations were characteristic for northern tourists visiting southern countries.
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