Given the crucial role airline personnel play, EurECCA calls on governments to prioritize Cabin Crew for access to vaccination once the elderly, vulnerable groups and health workers have been vaccinated.
With the devastating effects cause by COVID-19 air transport is critical to both economic recovery and the fight against the pandemic as a key player in the distribution of vaccines. Given the crucial role airline personnel play, EurECCA calls on governments to prioritize Cabin Crew for access to vaccination once the elderly, vulnerable groups and health workers have been vaccinated.
Aviation workers, including pilots, gate agents and cabin crew qualify as “essential workers” in the same way that other groups of essential, and front-line workers do such as, for example, the police force. EurECCA thus asks that aviation workers are not subject to the same restrictions as those imposed on the general public who travel.
Frontline workers such as cabin crew are in close physical contact with hundreds of other people during their working day. Researchers are thus recommending that, following the vaccination of healthcare workers the next priority should be for professionals whose jobs put them into close contact with large numbers of people such as Cabin Crew. This will help reduce transmission and R-number and can therefore result in faster termination of the virus.
It will have the additional benefit of making the general public more confident and reassured about travel, and thus help boost economic recovery of the airline sector.
It is therefore important that vaccinations for aviation workers are rolled out as rapidly and as evenly as possible as this will be the key to unlocking travel.
EurECCA therefore urges governments to step up, partner with global and domestic authorities if needed, and allow aviation’s frontline workers, to be vaccinated against the virus that poses such a threat to their work, their lives and the economy.
EurECCA represents, protects and develops the rights and needs of cabin crew all over Europe
EurECCA Position Paper Cabin Crew Covid 19 Vaccination.pdf
