As malodorous as her socks may have been, we're concerned by the women putting her
shoes on the magazine holder (read the OP), likely initiating that very faeco-oral (shoe-hand-mouth) vector.
Regarding secondary surfaces, from people who know about microbiology (too?):
Bacteria Can Linger on Airplane Surfaces for Days
"MRSA lasted longest (168 hours) on material from the seat-back pocket while
E. coli O157:H7 survived longest (96 hours) on the material from the armrest."
Sure, but some of the comments are about socks. Shoes will be a bit worse too, I agree.
But- while it would be nice to think that articles in peer reviewed journals are correct and written by experts, this just isn't always the case. I have published research and I know it is poor quality, medical student research that was done to pass my course and obtain a qualification. These two are not clinical microbiologists but one is a grad student. I haven't looked into the other one in any further detail.
Next, this was not swabs from an air plane surface which would be a more representative/realistic study. Other bacteria colonise particular surfaces and out-compete less efficient/well suited microbes. They have (as far as I can tell, cannot find the published data) mere inoculated materials representing air plane surfaces and then seen how the bacteria go. I will keep trying to find their methods but this is extremely unrealistic already.
Thirdly, they have gone for headline grabbing bacteria. If you want to study something useful, maybe ETEC would be better than EHEC, which is responsible for very few (relatively) illnesses. ETEC is the most common cause of traveller's diarrhoea. MRSA is similar in head-line grabbing potential, but the ability for you to get an illness from coming into contact with S.Aureus, let alone MRSA is very low. I.e. both these bacteria are not really that pathogenic in this circumstance.
I would suggest that my clinical microbiology is as good as that of those two researchers, and I have no worries about EHEC or MRSA from planes or any other non-medical object.
Edit- the other is an associate director for research, and has a PhD. I think it likely that his name ends up on lots of papers which he supervises only minimally or assists in some vague way, otherwise he would be lead author, especially as his name is alphabetically first.