[8] Studies of airport malaria have been largely observations of individual scenarios, all unique in timing, place of infection and problems, in addition to possibilities of error.

[10] Climate change, the rise in international travel, and less frequent aircraft disinfection, have likely played roles in the significant increase in cases between 2010 and 2020 as compared to the previous decade in Europe.

[10] Human malaria is native to 97 countries and is the world's most prevalent vector-borne disease with 212 million new cases in 2015.

[1] Any occurrences outside endemic countries are largely imported cases or less commonly malaria with no recent travel history.

[15] Economic necessity, disasters and conflicts, are known to affect the migration of people, which can also contribute to the movement of mosquitoes and hence risk of malaria.

Uninfected mosquitoes that arrive by flight may also live for long in enough as to feed on an infected person, which could also result in the transmission of malaria in non-endemic countries.

A number of species have been found in these Western European airports, particularly Anopheles gambiae which breeds in Africa's rainy season during summer, when conditions in Europe are more favourable for its survival.

[9] Due to the absence of a travel history in a person with fever, malaria is not usually expected, resulting in delays in diagnosis.

[22] It was also construed, according to an article in the BMJ by Donald Whitfield, that the same stowaway mosquito also transmitted malaria to a woman who rode through the same village on her motor scooter.

[9][23][24] High minimum temperatures and humidity were thought to have allowed the infected anopheline mosquitoes to enter the country via aircraft and facilitate their survival.

[21] In France, most flights at risk arrive at Charles de Gaulle Airport, Paris, and to a much lesser extent at Marseille, Nice, Lyon, Bordeaux and Toulouse.

[8] Airport malaria is not considered a serious public health problem but has a high fatality rate and poses a local threat.

[9] There were reports from as early as 1925 that diseases including cholera, plague, smallpox, typhus, yellow fever and malaria could make their way across countries within short periods of time on aircraft.

[30] Based on the International Sanitary Convention for Aerial Navigation (1933) (Hague), which came into force in 1935 to protect communities against diseases liable to be imported by aircraft,[31] air-traffic health control administrations, dealt with by the Office International d'Hygiène Publique, Paris, were able to impose maximally excepted measures for this purpose, but left their actual application to each country concerned.

Information regarding disease surveillance was supplied by "The Health Organization of the League of Nations" and updates were published and circulated regularly.

Its actions included the "disinsection of aircraft in the tropics and subtropics to prevent yellow fever and malaria-infected mosquitoes from being introduced into the country".

[30] In 1928, the first report of insects on aircraft came from the quarantine inspector of the dirigible Graf Zeppelin on its arrival in the United States.

[32] Epidemiological and entomological surveillance and research on the interconnection between malaria transmission and population movement requires attention, as to is improvement in living facilities to prevent forced movement of people, awareness of the connection between mosquitoes and malaria, in addition to adequate healthcare and the control of urbanization.

The UK is home to five species of anopheline mosquitoes, of which only Anopheles atroparvus breeds close enough in proximity to humans and in enough numbers to act as an efficient vector for malaria.