SYDNEY • Airline passengers want visible plastic barriers in the cabin to instil confidence in flying during the pandemic, saying they do not all trust industry assurances about high air quality on board, aviation industry executives said yesterday.

Other pandemic-related trends could include more private business-class seating on narrow-body planes, adding touchless lavatory features and permanent conversions of passenger planes to freighters, according to a panel at the MRO Asia-Pacific conference, which was held online.

Embraer is studying reusable and disposable plastic barriers for its regional jets, but challenges include making sure they are lightweight, not flammable and do not affect aircraft cleaning and evacuation, said Ms Lais Port Antunes, a business development manager in the planemaker's Asia-Pacific division.

"Modern aircraft are already equipped with excellent technology to filter the air," she said. "The passengers should feel safe in an aircraft cabin, but they need to see action."

Mr Tan Hean Seng, a senior executive at Singapore Technologies Engineering, said airline customers, fearing cost increases, did not seem interested in having fewer seats in economy class.

But, he added, the airline still needed to reassure them about risk.

"Having a shield between the seats, the passengers may feel safer, especially during mealtimes when passengers take off masks and there is potential contamination," Mr Tan said, adding that his company has developed a prototype.

In business class, airlines are already expressing more interest in lie-flat seating options as they look to use narrow-body planes on longer routes, Boeing vice-president of speciality products and services Kate Schaefer said.

"There is an awful lot of interest from those premium passengers in having a pod-type solution," she said. "There is going to be a lot of interest in pods, doors and staggered seating."

REUTERS