The researchers used all this data to simulate what would happen if a passenger in seat 14C (an aisle seat) were sick. To be conservative, they used an transmission rate that was four times higher than a real-life example from 1977, when 54 passengers and crew were forced to sit on the tarmac for 4.5 hours and 38 of them became sick with an influenza-like illness as a result.

Source: Los Angeles Times March 20, 2018 01:18 UTC