Cabin crews contravening government disease prevention regulations while on duty or at overseas destinations would face fines under an amendment to the Aircraft Flight Operation Regulations (航空器飛航作業管理規則).
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications on Wednesday last week announced that an amendment to the regulations would include penalties for pilots and flight attendants who breach disease prevention regulations.
The Civil Aeronautics Administration said it would announce a start date for the implementation of the changes to the enforcement rules of the Civil Aviation Act (民用航空法) after a three-day period for the public to respond.
This is the first time that such rules have been added to civil aviation regulations.
The administration, which proposed the amendment, said the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) can issue fines, based on the Communicable Disease Control Act (傳染病防治法), to pilots and flight attendants who fail to follow disease prevention measures after returning to Taiwan.
However, the act lacks a legal basis to fine cabin crews if they breach regulations while on flight duties or overseas, it said.
The Civil Aviation Act, which stipulates regulations to ensure that cabin crews enforce safety measures, does not list penalties for breaches, the agency said.
Cabin crews are only subject to punishment from airlines, it added.
Based on the administration’s proposed amendment, whenever the CECC is convened to contain an outbreak of an infectious disease, airlines should ensure that pilots, flight attendants, flight certifiers and aircraft maintenance workers follow disease prevention guidelines and measures stipulated by the center, or face punishment.
Under the Civil Aviation Act, fines for airlines range from NT$600,000 to NT$3 million (US$21,199 to US$105,996), while fines for cabin crews are from NT$60,000 to NT$300,000.
The administration has listed more than 20 health control measures for cabin crews, including wearing masks and protective gear while on flight duties and a ban on leaving hotel rooms and receiving visitors at overseas destinations.
In other news, the Taipei City Government is to relaunch a travel warning mechanism on its tourism smartphone app, which would use a system that measures and shows crowd levels at popular tourist sites.
The Taipei Department of Information and Tourism on Feb. 10 launched a travel warning mechanism on its smartphone app, Undiscovered Taipei, to indicate crowd levels at 19 popular sites during the Lunar New Year holiday.
The mechanism used red, yellow and green to show “very crowded,” “slightly crowded” and “normal” crowd levels. The information was reported hourly by on-site staff.
The service was pulled from the app before the three-day 228 Peace Memorial Day weekend, when many popular attraction sites in the city were crowded.
A city councilor later questioned if removing the feature was harmful to the city’s COVID-19 prevention efforts.
Regarding the app, Taipei Deputy Mayor Vivian Huang (黃珊珊) yesterday said that the COVID-19 situation in Taiwan is fairly stable, so it should be safe to visit tourist sites if people wear masks.
Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) hopes that the feature can be re-designed to integrate an automated system and operate daily, so the government would need to invite open tenders for creating such a system, she said.
The department yesterday said the travel warning mechanism on the app would be relaunched for the Tomb Sweeping Day long weekend next month, and that a new automated version is expected to be launched in June, at the earliest.
Additional reporting by CNA
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