World’s First Flight Operated by Fully Vaccinated Frontline Aviation Staff Takes to the Skies

Monday 22nd of February 2021

Emirates Group committed to the health and safety of its customers and has been one of the most alert service providers in the global aviation industry through the pandemic. Emirates implemented robust safety measures to protect and prioritize the safety of its customers and employees at all stages of the travel journey.

Since they rolled out the vaccination drive at a pace just over a month ago, close to 26,000 %, of the Group’s UAE frontline aviation workforce have received both doses of either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Sinopharm vaccines. The Emirates Group vaccination programme is the latest in its series of safeguards and protections to deliver on its health and safety promises to its customers, employees and the communities it serves around the world.

Just yesterday, the airline became amongst the first airlines in the world to operate a flight with fully vaccinated frontline teams servicing customers at every touchpoint of the travel journey. EK215 departed Dubai for Los Angeles at 0830 hrs local time, safely safely supported by check-in, security, Business and First Class lounge and boarding gate employees, as well as engineers, pilots and cabin crew who made the choice to be fully vaccinated. Loading and special handling teams from dnata, as well as SkyCargo teams working on the cargo and logistics requirements for EK215 were also fully vaccinated teams.

With the rapid progress of vaccination programme and high rates of take-up, Chief Operating Officer of Emirates Airline, Adel Al Redha anticipates that more of the airline’s flights will soon be operating with fully vaccinated frontline employees.

“Our operational workforce are at the aviation frontline, helping people get to where they need to be, and moving essential goods to global communities. Protecting our people with vaccinations is important – for them, for our community, for the smooth running of our operations, and also for our customers as it introduces of an additional layer of protection when they travel with us.” Al Redha added.

The Emirates flies daily to the Maldives and has recorded over 300 flight moments to the destination this year, as of February 10th. It is also the top career of tourists to Maldives with 24,974 tourists choosing to fly via Emirates Airline to the Maldives in this period.