“This is scary, this is real:” Seattle air traveler with COVID-19 asks who contact traces passengers

There’s no way to prove where Markeisha Brown was infected with coronavirus, but she says she’d been tested before a trip to Atlanta, and before she boarded the flight home to Seattle, she was healthy.

“I noticed the flight was full, there was no way to do social distancing, so I asked how to get another flight,” she said. She was told there were no timely options, so she took the flight.

When she noticed a man seated in front of her not wearing a mask for an extended length of time, she leaned forward.

“I asked him, ‘Can you put your mask on?’ And he just looked at me as if I wasn’t talking to him,”' she said.

After she complained to flight attendants, Brown said intercom announcements were made, and at one point, she said the man told her to “calm down.”

“I took a picture of him and I was frustrated,” she said. “I started Googling customer service while I was on the plane, while didn’t put his mask on. He was just talking the whole ride.”

Days after arriving home, the mother of three says she felt symptoms. Loss of taste and smell, followed by a cough, body aches and depression. When she tested positive for COVID-19, Brown said she called and wrote United Airlines, figuring they would contact trace every passenger who sat around her, including the man without a mask.

“I don’t feel that I’m the only person from the airline who has it,” she said. “So I called United Airlines to see if they could reach out and send an email or a call to everybody who was on that plane, and tell them to get tested because this is scary, it’s real and I feel they need to take this seriously.”

United has one of the most advanced anti-microbial clean routines in the airline industry, but Brown says customer service representatives indicated they are not in the business of contact tracing, after a passenger reports becoming infected.

According to a United Airlines spokesperson, officials at the CDC or a local public health authority are responsible for contacting anyone they consider to have been a close contact to a passenger who later tests positive.

According to the CDC’s website, “A contact investigation often starts with a phone call to a CDC Quarantine Station located at a US international airport. (There is a CDC Station in the SeaTac Airport terminal) The caller is a public health official who informs CDC about a recent air traveler diagnosed with a specific contagious disease,” the statement read.

According to the airline spokesperson, it would be up to local health officials to share Brown’s report with the CDC, and any contact tracing would begin there.

The United spokesperson also responded in writing  to Brown’s report of the passenger not cooperating with the mask policy: “All travelers are required to wear face coverings during their entire flight,” the statement read. “We’re also requiring travelers to wear face coverings in the airport, including at United customer service counters, our gates and our baggage claim areas. We’ll require face coverings in the airport and on board until further notice.”

The only exceptions to United’s policy are children younger than two years old, according to a United website. Customers are expected to wear a mask for the duration of the flight, except when eating or drinking.

Brown said she was advised to put her concerns and complaints in writing to a customer representative, but she said she was never told about the process of informing passengers they may have been exposed. “I think this should be taken seriously,” she said.

Cox Media Group