Pilots Say FedEx Medical Supply Flights From China Need More Safety Guarantees

FedE
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x pilots say a newly implemented program to deliver critical medical supplies from China may collapse without better safety guarantees.

“Our pilots are being pushed to the breaking point,” said Joe DePete, president of the Air Line Pilots Association. “They want to fly this mission; they are proud of doing this mission, and they know that the supplies coming back mean that people will live or die.

“But their basic duty as pilots to put safety first,” DePete said Friday in an interview.

ALPA represents 63,000 pilots at 35 airlines including FedEx Express
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, which has about 4,600 pilots. FedEx Express said Thursday that it will participate in Project Airbridge, a public-private partnership intended to provide rapid shipment of personal protective equipment and other medical supplies to the U.S.

DePete said some U.S. carriers, including FedEx Express, do not provide sufficient cockpit cleaning and disinfecting and do not notify pilots of contacts with other pilots who have tested positive for COVID-19.

DePete, a FedEx pilot for 33 years, said two FedEx pilots who have flown to Guangzhou, where FedEx has an Asia Pacific hub, have tested positive. Additionally, he said, 200 ALPA members have tested positive for the disease and three pilots – at Delta, JetBlue and an undisclosed carrier – have died.

Since March, ALPA has been asking the Federal Aviation Administration to require that carriers comply with guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention related to cabin cleaning and notification. DePete said that so far, no requirement has been implemented

“The safety and well-being of our team members and our customers is our top priority,” a FedEx spokeswoman said Friday.

“With respect to our crewmembers, we have followed the recommended practices issued by the FAA and CDC on February 2, 2020, as well as those issued on March 12, 2020 and implemented the necessary safety measures to protect our crews,” the spokeswoman said.

“These measures include a robust health self-monitoring program that we are overseeing, to include requiring pilots to check their temperature twice a day, extensive aircraft and facility cleaning and disinfecting procedures, and provisions of PPE for each pilot,” she said.

An FAA spokesman said Friday that “As the CDC learns more about the virus; the illness it causes, COVID-19, as well as the expansion of transmission across the world, the FAA and the CDC have continued to update the guidance for maximum protection of crews and passengers, while ensuring vital commercial air transport operations can continue.

“The FAA is taking seriously reports of airline failures to follow this crucial health guidance,” the spokesman said. “Any allegation to the contrary is inflammatory and inaccurate.” 

FedEx said Thursday that Project Airbridge shipments will become part of the U.S. strategic national stockpile, then distributed to healthcare facilities by FEMA. It said that so far two shipments of protective suits have been flown from Vietnam to Texas, and that several flights this week were scheduled to carry personal protective supplies from China to Illinois.

On the FedEx earnings call on March 17, Chief Operating Officer Raj Subramaniam said, “FedEx grew 246 flights in and out of China just last week, which is aligned with our normal flight schedule. And over the past couple of weeks, our flights have been full, and we have registered record load factors intra Asia, especially with our hub in Guangzhou.”

DePete said the coronavirus crisis has caused particular problems for pilots on flights that arrive in Guangzhou.

He said Chinese officials have conducted “harsh testing” of arriving pilots, “basically someone from the Chinese government sticking a long Q-tip in the nostril, all the way to the ear canal.”  

He said the U.S. Department of Transportation has sought to have the testing altered from nasal to throat testing. “That has helped, but it’s still invasive,” he said. “The swabbing goes far back into the throat.”

Additionally, he said, arriving pilots “have been sprayed with disinfectant – they have no idea what they’re being sprayed with,” and pilots who overnight in Guangzhou are confined to hotel rooms there.