Flight attendants, as part of an increasingly stringent bio-security standard, will soon be required to be vaccinated for HIV and influenza as part of the daily cabin check-in process for Singapore Airlines. The carrier will have to designate two crew members for the mandatory measures, which they will complete in the future before boarding a flight for certification.
Briefings for cabin crew training given to service staff reveal the plan: Singapore Airlines crew will now undergo mandatory HIV and influenza viral load testing. As part of the training, the crewmember who carried out the earlier check-in testing will carry out a fresh vaccination against both HIV and influenza virus, according to the briefing notes. Another crew member, who completes the training, will then perform another daily trip check-in on the same aircraft on a subsequent day. The current policy stipulates only a passenger’s biological specimen be tested.
According to the airline, the line pilot and cabin crew’s mandatory flu shot will be supplied by the government. Such pilots have always been required to undergo regular medical screening. Singapore Airlines — not the only carrier to undergo such a check-in process — has long taken several measures to shore up security, including randomly deploying armed security officers in the aisles and restricting the number of carry-on bags to three per passenger in a bid to tighten airline security.
The extensive requirements come at a time when the industry is facing heightened concerns over security. “The biggest threat to air safety is systemic failure in a large and complex organization, caused by failure to foresee and address risk,” said International Air Transport Association’s Chief Executive Officer Alexandre de Juniac in a speech to the organization’s governing council, according to a Wednesday report by Bloomberg.