COVID rules take toll on Taiwanese pilots
Worry strain of quarantine may lead to crashes
Taiwanese pilots have warned they may crash planes because of the toll that strict, back-to-back quarantines are taking on their mental health.
Despite operating flights that are critical to the island’s export-heavy economy, aircrews say they are treated as social pariahs by a public that has largely been protected from COVID.
Parties, restaurants, gyms and even trips to the playground with their children are all forbidden for flight crews under some of toughest quarantine rules in the world.
“People are trying to not leave each other alone in the cockpit,” one pilot said, describing the exhaustion of being indefinitely deprived of a normal life and facing rising online hate.
In an online pilot chat group before a meeting on Thursday between union representatives, the Civil Aeronautics Administration and the Centre for Disease Control, crew members pleaded for safety concerns to be raised. “Among almost 3,000 pilots some may be depressed and bullied to the point of making fatal mistakes ... How can I make sure that the colleague next to me won’t be the next Germanwings case?” read one message, referring a co-pilot for the German airline who deliberately crashed a plane into a mountain in 2015, killing 150 people.
Taiwan, an island of 24 million, has been commended around the world for its robust pandemic response, which has kept cases to about 16,000 and deaths at 838 through tight border controls that impose a 14-day quarantine on all arrivals.
Fully vaccinated crew have to do five days’ quarantine in a hotel or company dorm, then nine days of “enhanced self-health management.”
During this period, they must avoid public spaces and group activities. Even crew on layover flights are monitored by an electronic hotel key to ensure they do not leave the room until the journey home.
“You feel ashamed of being a pilot here in Taiwan,” one man said. “I’m not going to say I’m a pilot. I feel like I’m hiding, like a thief,” he said.
“People are thinking that pilots are murderers because we brought back the virus,” said another crew member, who described an online “witchhunt,” including comments wishing death on pilots.
A spokesman for the Civil Aeronautics Administration said that the organization was aware of the mental stress facing pilots and was in talks with unions on how to improve conditions, change public misconceptions and rearrange working schedules.