Commercial airline protocol during COVID-19 pandemic: An experience of Thai Airways International

Krit Pongpirul; Kanitha Kaewpoungngam; Korn Chotirosniramit; Sinnop Theprugsa

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0237299

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionMay 22, 2020
16 Jul 2020 Decision Letter - Abdallah M. Samy, Editor PONE-D-20-15480 Commercial Airline Protocol during COVID-19 Pandemic: An Experience of Thai Airways International PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Pongpirul, Thank you very much for submitting your manuscript "Commercial Airline Protocol during COVID-19 Pandemic: An Experience of Thai Airways International" (#PONE-D-20-15480) for review by PLOS ONE. As with all papers submitted to the journal, your manuscript was fully evaluated by academic editor (myself) and by independent peer reviewers. The reviewers appreciated the attention to an important health topic, but they raised substantial concerns about the paper that must be addressed before this manuscript can be accurately assessed for meeting the PLOS ONE criteria. Therefore, if you feel these issues can be adequately addressed, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. 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You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'. If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Abdallah M. Samy, PhD Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. 1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf 2. We note that you have indicated that data from this study are available upon request. PLOS only allows data to be available upon request if there are legal or ethical restrictions on sharing data publicly. For more information on unacceptable data access restrictions, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-unacceptable-data-access-restrictions. In your revised cover letter, please address the following prompts: a) If there are ethical or legal restrictions on sharing a de-identified data set, please explain them in detail (e.g., data contain potentially sensitive information, data are owned by a third-party organization, etc.) and who has imposed them (e.g., an ethics committee). Please also provide contact information for a data access committee, ethics committee, or other institutional body to which data requests may be sent. b) If there are no restrictions, please upload the minimal anonymized data set necessary to replicate your study findings as either Supporting Information files or to a stable, public repository and provide us with the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers. For a list of acceptable repositories, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-recommended-repositories. We will update your Data Availability statement on your behalf to reflect the information you provide. 3. Thank you for including your competing interests statement; "The authors have declared that no competing interests exist." We note that one or more of the authors are employed by a commercial company: Thai Airways International Public Company Limited Please provide an amended Funding Statement declaring this commercial affiliation, as well as a statement regarding the Role of Funders in your study. If the funding organization did not play a role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript and only provided financial support in the form of authors' salaries and/or research materials, please review your statements relating to the author contributions, and ensure you have specifically and accurately indicated the role(s) that these authors had in your study. You can update author roles in the Author Contributions section of the online submission form. Please also include the following statement within your amended Funding Statement. “The funder provided support in the form of salaries for authors [insert relevant initials], but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific roles of these authors are articulated in the ‘author contributions’ section.” If your commercial affiliation did play a role in your study, please state and explain this role within your updated Funding Statement. 2. Please also provide an updated Competing Interests Statement declaring this commercial affiliation along with any other relevant declarations relating to employment, consultancy, patents, products in development, or marketed products, etc. Within your Competing Interests Statement, please confirm that this commercial affiliation does not alter your adherence to all PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials by including the following statement: "This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.” (as detailed online in our guide for authors http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/competing-interests) . If this adherence statement is not accurate and there are restrictions on sharing of data and/or materials, please state these. Please note that we cannot proceed with consideration of your article until this information has been declared. Please include both an updated Funding Statement and Competing Interests Statement in your cover letter. We will change the online submission form on your behalf. Please know it is PLOS ONE policy for corresponding authors to declare, on behalf of all authors, all potential competing interests for the purposes of transparency. PLOS defines a competing interest as anything that interferes with, or could reasonably be perceived as interfering with, the full and objective presentation, peer review, editorial decision-making, or publication of research or non-research articles submitted to one of the journals. Competing interests can be financial or non-financial, professional, or personal. Competing interests can arise in relationship to an organization or another person. Please follow this link to our website for more details on competing interests: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/competing-interests Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Partly ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: N/A ****** 3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 5. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: 1.This article by Krit Pongpirul gives a research article on commercial airline protocol during COVID-19 pandemic from Thai airways international to explore the implementation feasibility of airways protocol. They conducted an online questionnaire survey of passengers and in-depth interview with aircrews of two flights and they thought that the protocol was well received by the passengers and aircrews of the repatriation flights. Overall, this article gives a broad interview of the potential flight-level prevent and control transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in flght, but lacks depth. 2.The satisfaction of passengers and crew members should not be taken as the main evaluation parameters of the study. The number of research flights should be increased to improve the reliability of the data. 3. 124-125 “The overall response rate of this research was 22.50.” and “Passengers estimated average physical distances” were the results bias? 4. The prolonged flight time is bound to increase the number of temperature tests and the number of activities of passengers on the plane, including eating, going to the toilet, etc. If there are confirmed patients on the flight but they are not detected before boarding the aircraft and subject them to the necessary isolation and treatment, these activities must increase the risk of normal passenger infection. ****** 6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review?** For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: No [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0237299.r001
Revision 1
17 Jul 2020 Author Response Point-by-Point responses to Editor’s and Reviewer’s Comments: Editor: 1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements. Response: The manuscript was reformatted to meet PLOS ONE’s style requirements. Editor: 2. We note that you have indicated that data from this study are available upon request. PLOS only allows data to be available upon request if there are legal or ethical restrictions on sharing data publicly. In your revised cover letter, please address the following prompts: a) If there are ethical or legal restrictions on sharing a de-identified data set, please explain them in detail (e.g., data contain potentially sensitive information, data are owned by a third-party organization, etc.) and who has imposed them (e.g., an ethics committee). Please also provide contact information for a data access committee, ethics committee, or other institutional body to which data requests may be sent. b) If there are no restrictions, please upload the minimal anonymized data set necessary to replicate your study findings as either Supporting Information files or to a stable, public repository and provide us with the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers. For a list of acceptable repositories, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-recommended-repositories. We will update your Data Availability statement on your behalf to reflect the information you provide. Response: The data has been deidentified and deposited in the UK Data Service. The data was also uploaded to the manuscript submission system while the DOI link is not yet available. Editor: 3. Thank you for including your competing interests statement; "The authors have declared that no competing interests exist." We note that one or more of the authors are employed by a commercial company: Thai Airways International Public Company Limited. Please provide an amended Funding Statement declaring this commercial affiliation, as well as a statement regarding the Role of Funders in your study. If the funding organization did not play a role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript and only provided financial support in the form of authors' salaries and/or research materials, please review your statements relating to the author contributions, and ensure you have specifically and accurately indicated the role(s) that these authors had in your study. You can update author roles in the Author Contributions section of the online submission form. Please also include the following statement within your amended Funding Statement. “The funder provided support in the form of salaries for authors [insert relevant initials], but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific roles of these authors are articulated in the ‘author contributions’ section.” If your commercial affiliation did play a role in your study, please state and explain this role within your updated Funding Statement. Please also provide an updated Competing Interests Statement declaring this commercial affiliation along with any other relevant declarations relating to employment, consultancy, patents, products in development, or marketed products, etc. Within your Competing Interests Statement, please confirm that this commercial affiliation does not alter your adherence to all PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials by including the following statement: "This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.” (as detailed online in our guide for authors http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/competing-interests). If this adherence statement is not accurate and there are restrictions on sharing of data and/or materials, please state these. Please note that we cannot proceed with consideration of your article until this information has been declared. Please include both an updated Funding Statement and Competing Interests Statement in your cover letter. We will change the online submission form on your behalf. Please know it is PLOS ONE policy for corresponding authors to declare, on behalf of all authors, all potential competing interests for the purposes of transparency. PLOS defines a competing interest as anything that interferes with, or could reasonably be perceived as interfering with, the full and objective presentation, peer review, editorial decision-making, or publication of research or non-research articles submitted to one of the journals. Competing interests can be financial or non-financial, professional, or personal. Competing interests can arise in relationship to an organization or another person. Please follow this link to our website for more details on competing interests: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/competing-interests Response: The Funding Statement was updated as “Thai Airways International provided support in the form of salaries for author ST, but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific roles of the authors are articulated in the ‘author contributions’ section.” The Competing Interests Stement was updated as “The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest. The commercial airline affiliation of author ST does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.” Reviewer #1: 1.This article by Krit Pongpirul gives a research article on commercial airline protocol during COVID-19 pandemic from Thai airways international to explore the implementation feasibility of airways protocol. They conducted an online questionnaire survey of passengers and in-depth interview with aircrews of two flights and they thought that the protocol was well received by the passengers and aircrews of the repatriation flights. Overall, this article gives a broad interview of the potential flight-level prevent and control transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in flght, but lacks depth. Response: Thank you very much for the comments. Although we wish we could conduct a more in-depth study, there had been several situational limitations that prevented us from doing so. We decided to conduct the study as best as possible. Reviewer #1: 2.The satisfaction of passengers and crew members should not be taken as the main evaluation parameters of the study. The number of research flights should be increased to improve the reliability of the data. Response: The ‘satisfaction’ of passengers and crew members was not the primary focus of our study. Rather, they were ask to report useful information from their perspectives as shown in Table 2. We wish we could increased the number of research flights as advised. Reviewer #1: 3. 124-125 “The overall response rate of this research was 22.50.” and “Passengers estimated average physical distances” were the results bias? Response: Despite the low response rate, given the situational limitations mentioned above, we believe that the selection bias was only a minor concern in our study. As mentioned in the Discussion section, the responses were from an unbiased seat selection so the findings could be representative of the flights. Reviewer #1: 4. The prolonged flight time is bound to increase the number of temperature tests and the number of activities of passengers on the plane, including eating, going to the toilet, etc. If there are confirmed patients on the flight but they are not detected before boarding the aircraft and subject them to the necessary isolation and treatment, these activities must increase the risk of normal passenger infection. Response: Thank you very much. We agree with the point raised but our data could not be used for testing the hypothesis. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0237299.r002
27 Jul 2020 Decision Letter - Abdallah M. Samy, Editor Commercial airline protocol during COVID-19 pandemic: An experience of Thai Airways International PONE-D-20-15480R1 Dear Dr. Pongpirul, We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication. An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. Kind regards, Abdallah M. Samy, PhD Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0237299.r003
Formally Accepted
29 Jul 2020 Acceptance Letter - Abdallah M. Samy, Editor PONE-D-20-15480R1 Commercial airline protocol during COVID-19 pandemic: An experience of Thai Airways International Dear Dr. Pongpirul: I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org. If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Abdallah M. Samy Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0237299.r004

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