Getting off the tarmac

Three global experts share their perspective on how the aviation industry – aircraft, airports and passenger traffic – may look like in the coming months.

Aircraft Manufacturer

Bruno Fargeon, ‘Keep Trust in Air Travel’ project Head, Airbus

We need to demystify some of the ideas regarding bio-security on board an aircraft. It is an extremely controlled environment that we manage from the airport gates. Aircraft cabins have a very high renewal rate of air and changes every 2-3 minutes. It can be compared to the surgery rooms in hospitals. My family and I feel very safe while flying.

Travel Data Provider

John Grant, Chief Analyst, OAG

We are waiting for the Indian government to ease travel restrictions and they’ve indicated that they will make a decision on this soon. But the pace of return anticipated between Sept-Oct in Asia seems unlikely. It’s worrying times in Asia and you struggle to see how we are going to get out of this in the short term. It’s a double-whammy effect; airlines do not make money at 30% capacity. In fact, they haemorrhage money at 30%.

Airport

Paul Griffiths, CEO, Dubai Airports

We have been working with other airports and authorities on the idea of getting a single ID for a passenger so if they check-in at one location, we could use their documents just that one time, digitally encode them, and use them at every checkpoint in the journey. That whole process is seamless and means you only have to enter your data once. But trying to get this off the ground and agreeing to common standards are still up in the air.

Inputs by Hazel Jain