Amid the smoking exhaust ports, advanced avionics and parents taking photographs of their children in mock-up cockpits, real business deals are made at airshows throughout the world.
The Singapore Airshow, which ends tomorrow, has been no different. In 2014, 1,018 companies from 47 countries secured deals worth $32bn at the biannual showcase, a 3% increase from the previous edition.
Increasing participation - 14% more companies took part in 2014 compared to 2012 - is one of many indications that Asia’s aviation sector has flourished in recent years.
Asia’s fleet of commercial aircraft has doubled in the last decade to nearly 6,000, plane manufacturers Airbus and Boeing estimate.
Airlines in the Asia Pacific will need 12,500-to-15,000 new aircraft in the coming 20 years, the firms predict.
But behind the unprecedented growth in air travel, there are growing concerns that Asia’s safety infrastructure is not keeping up.
An International Air Transport Association (IATA) safety report for 2014 showed there were 14 aviation accidents in the Asia Pacific, more than any other region in the world.
The year 2015 was a better for Asian airlines, according to the latest IATA report released last week, but the region still had a higher rate of serious jet crashes per flight than Europe or North America.
While Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific and Australia’s Qantas have topped recent aviation safety rankings, the German-based Jacdec aviation database puts five Asian airlines in the bottom six of its 2016 safety ranking.
Regulatory oversights and weak safety management systems were the areas most responsible for air traffic accidents in Asia between 2010 and 2014, the IATA has said.
Poor regulation has become an acute problem for Thailand, one of the region’s biggest tourist destinations.
Thailand’s aviation authority was downgraded separately by the United Nation’s International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) and by the US Federal Aviation Administration in 2015. The US body deemed that Thailand “lacks laws or regulations necessary to oversee air carriers in accordance with minimum international standards”.
The other area highlighted by the IATA - the lack of a systematic approach to managing safety - includes problems with training and maintenance.
Flying schools in Indonesia are struggling to cope with a demand for some 600 new pilots every year.
After the crash of AirAsia flight QZ8501 from Indonesia in December 2014, investigators called for better pilot training for unexpected situations during flight.
Most analysts, however, agree that governments across South-East Asia are beginning to take steps to meet safety standards. Thailand’s military government set up a task force to meet the challenges of the ICAO downgrade.
A similar step by the Filipino government several years ago resulted in the ICAO removing the country from its “significant safety watch list” in 2013.