|
Greetings,
April 30, 2009
Swine Flu/H1N1 Update
Your MEC has
been involved in regularly scheduled conference calls that
include all AS departments as well as their counterparts at
Horizon. Many of our suggestions, such as the reactivation
of the Hotline born of the December snowstorms have been acted
on. That number is 1- 877- 431- 7242, press 1 and then press 1
again.
Alaskasworld now has a Q & A that you may
submit additional questions to. Please review the article,
the Q & A is found listed in the links portion of the full
article, and feel free to submit additional questions.
Please continue to check the article as it has been
updated several times. The most recent update outlines,
for example, the completion targets for some of the recent
changes affecting us such as the removal of all pillow and
blankets. This is only being done at core stations so you
may continue to see them through Saturday. The supply of
additional masks and gloves being added to the Flight Attendant
Kits for passengers exhibiting symptoms will take a few days,
emphasis is of course on our Mexico flights.
Yesterday,
4/29/09, the World Health Organization (WHO) elevated the their
concern to Level 5. It is important to understand the WHO
is addressing not the severity of the H1N1 virus itself but
rather the scope of the communicability of the H1N1 virus.
Links to the WHO, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC)
and the most current updates from our Air Safety and Health
folks in the AFA International Office are listed on our MEC
website.
Currently there have been no major changes from the
preventative protocol the CDC earlier outlined. We have a
couple specific items we think you should
incorporate:
· Use gloves to pick
up trash or be certain to wash your hands thoroughly throughout
your day and use a hand sanitizer with at least 60%
alcohol.
· Do not touch items
that have come in contact with bodily fluids - such as utensils
and cups without gloves.
· Do
not reuse cups for second service. Recycling items other
than paper and cardboard has been temporarily
suspended.
· Encourage
passengers not to place any tissues on the tray table or in the
seat back pocket; direct them to use the air sickness
bags.
Alaska continues to operate all flights to and from
Mexico as scheduled. To help identify infected travelers
all airports in Mexico have instituted a thermo-screening
process. This screening will include non-rev passengers
but flight crews are exempt.
Currently if you are given a
PD or ED you are unable to pick up flying via eMaestro. As
this situation progresses we may try and structure a manual
system to replace lost flying. Currently however the
requests are low.
We have discussed with management what
our schedules might look like if we need to drive our Mexico
flying to be structured as turns rather than RON both as a
general schedule application and as a method to get our crews
out expeditiously as we have done in previous years in response
to natural disasters such as hurricanes. These are both
conceptual at this time.
We will continue to be involved
with Alaska management and monitoring news and health resources.
It will not be our goal to re-iterate any changes that
occur with these communications but rather to let you know they
have occurred and direct you to the applicable
source.
Fly safely and stay informed.
Kelle Wells
MEC President and your MEC Officers
|
