Cruising Altitude is a weekly column about air travel. Have a suggestion for a future topic? Fill out the form or email me at the address at the bottom of this page.
Flying is generally thought of as the safest way to travel, but there’s a hidden danger to it. Lurking on every flight, there's one variable that could cause long-term damage to passengers and crews alike.
I’m talking about the sun. Radiation exposure is rarely the first thing that comes to mind as a risk in air travel, but as new generations of planes fly at higher altitudes, according to the Association of Flight Attendants, and over-the-pole flights continue as a common routing on intercontinental itineraries, passengers – and especially crews – have an increased chance of radiation exposure.
"More frequent travelers and airline crews need to understand that they have a high exposure to radiation and there are tools to track that exposure to radiation and make individual decisions based on that," Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA), told me.
The good news is there’s very little risk to those who fly only occasionally, but frequent travelers and flight crews could face radiation as a greater hazard.
