A passenger drops dead on a packed flight thousands of kilometres from the plane's destination, and the cabin crew, with limited space options, pops the corpse in a cupboard.

That's the future for fatalities on Singapore Airlines, which will introduce a special corpse cupboard - large enough to store a body of average size - in its new fleet of Airbus A340-500 aircraft.

The cupboard, near an exit door, will be fitted with special straps to prevent the body moving during turbulence.