Flight risk low

The majority of passengers on a Korean Air flight to New Zealand were unlikely to have been told they shared the jet with a woman who had a highly infectious form of tuberculosis.

The Herald on Sunday revealed last week that taxpayers coughed up $330,000 for a secret charter flight to return the South Korean tourist home after she got into the country by hiding her illness from the airline and immigration officials in May 2005.

The illness was discovered when she saw a doctor in Auckland.

Auckland Public Health Service medical officer of health Dr Cathy Pikholz said the risk from an infected person walking to the toilet or around the plane for exercise was very low.

"I don't know if anyone has ever been shown to contract it from being exposed to a TB case on a plane," she said.

Her department contacted about 900 people a year in the Auckland area who could have come into contact with TB.