Airline passenger experiences with the swine flu pandemic
News of Swine Flu appeared suddenly, out of nowhere, tourism in Mexico took a hit, panic set in as the flu spread across the world. The World Health Organisation recently set the flu as category six because it is a pandemic and cases are appearing in a lot of countries.
Blown out of proportion
The last thing the travel industry needs in a recession are borders closed due to the swine flu disease. I am not suggesting that it is not important to make people aware of the symptoms of swine flu but some of the stories on the news and in the papers have been blown out of proportion.
Earlier today I read an interesting blog post about traveller’s experiences in countries like China, where people were kept in quarantine for days or have been put off travelling to because the authorities are panicking and going well over the top.
Flight crew wear flight masks
One blogger asked the question, should flight crew wear masks after he flew with Cathay Pacific and all of the crew members were wearing anti–swine flu face masks. I would have taken offense to this. Has anyone had a similar experience lately?
Stopped the flight from disembarking
My friend Kirsty managed to come down with the flu on the way from Dubai and lo and behold due to the whole swine flu business she managed to singlehandedly stop the whole flight from disembarking when she arrived at Melbourne airport.
Everyone stood there for 30 minutes waiting to get off the flight and three quarantine officers came on board with their facemasks on to interview her. They then had to wait for the chief medical officer to give clearance for the other passengers to disembark.
She was then escorted off the plane and taken to the quarantine department where she was seen by the swine flu doctor. What a frightening experience. In this case I can understand their concern; it was in the height of the swine flu outbreak, but even so, scary experience.
Your experiences and thoughts
I am interested to hear of any swine flu experiences that you’ve come up against or heard.
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Airline passenger experiences with the swine flu pandemic
