Airline Pilots Fight For Safety, For Themselves & Their Passengers

In the midst of the holiday season as Christmas travel takes place all around the world, much of that travel is taking place on planes even in these strange times. Most of these planes are now being flown by fully covid-vaccinated pilots, as airlines around the world have rushed to impose vaccination mandates on their workforce. However, with emerging caution around the risk of serious adverse reactions, such as heart inflammation and strokes, groups of pilots around the world are fighting back against these vaccine mandates. Passenger safety is paramount and many airlines are still ignoring the worrying signs.

Airline Mandates

Air New Zealand has required that all its air crew have their first shot by November 14th and their 2nd shot by Boxing Day. It has also offered its unvaccinated or undisclosed employees Leave Without Pay agreements, which require those who are unvaccinated to first use up their paid leave then go on unpaid leave. Refusal to sign the agreements meant termination of employment. The NZ Government is the majority shareholder in Air New Zealand, with almost 52% of its shares.

Meanwhile in the US, President Biden’s vaccination mandate for all federal contractors has been quashed by successive Courts. Even before the Court decisions were announced, notably Delta Airlines bucked the trend and refused to require mandatory vaccination for its workforce, stating only that monthly healthcare insurance premiums for unvaccinated employees would rise by US$200.

Since the Court decisions, Southwest Airlines and American Airlines have also backed down from mandating employees, with Boeing being the most recent airline-related company to also suspend mandates. This leaves United Airlines as the only major US carrier left that has an employee vaccination mandate. It was also the first major US carrier to impose a vaccine requirement. A US federal court has upheld United’s mandate, which requires employees to either vaccinate or take unpaid leave, including those who are exempted for medical or religious reasons. United has stated it will offer exempted employees non-customer facing roles and those that refuse will be placed on leave.

Elsewhere, Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) has dropped its masking requirement on intra-Scandinavian flights.

Adverse Reactions & Aviation Authorities

As adverse reaction reports mount up in the US Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) and other adverse reactions databases for covid-19 vaccines worldwide, including from within the professional pilots community, concerns have grown among pilots for their safety and especially the safety of their passengers during flight. Commercial pilots are one of the most closely scrutinised groups of people for their health. In NZ, pilots are required to undergo detailed annual medical examinations until the age of 45, then every 6 months afterwards.

The Daily Examiner is aware of at least 3 Air NZ pilots who have suffered severe reactions to the Pfizer vaccine, including pericarditis within 48 hours of the jab. At least one has had their heart condition confirmed as being caused by the jab, and received ACC cover for it.

At present, the NZ CAA already “asks pilots not to fly for 24 hours following the vaccine and to only return [to] flying once free of side effects.” This was contained in an e-mail received from the CAA in July in response to a request for its position on NZ pilots taking covid vaccines. To date, we are aware that only approximately 300 medical exemptions have been issued nationwide for covid vaccines. As we understand is the case with Air NZ, those pilots who were to get medical exemptions would still be faced with job loss or indefinite leave without pay as any medical condition to receive such an exemption would preclude them from holding an aviation medical. Air NZ also does not consider a severe reaction to the Pfizer vaccine to be a valid reason to exempt an employee from its company mandate and continue in their role.

The US Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) is also extremely strict with its requirements for pilots. Specifically, title 14 of the Code of Federal Regulations §61.53 states that “no person who holds a medical certificate issued under part 67 of this chapter may act as pilot in command, or in any other capacity as a required pilot flight crewmember, while that person… [is] receiving treatment for a medical condition that results in the person being unable to meet the requirements for the medical certificate necessary for the pilot operation.”

In interpreting this provision, the Guide for Aviation Medical Examiners (AME) states, in reference to the issuance of medical certificates in the instance of use of pharmaceuticals as therapeutic medications for “Do Not Issue – Do Not Fly” orders, to include classes of medications or medications which:

“FDA (Food and Drug Administration) approved less than 12 months ago. The FAA generally requires at least one-year of post-marketing experience with a new drug before consideration for aeromedical certification purposes. This observation period allows time for uncommon, but aeromedically significant, adverse effects to manifest themselves….”

This portion of the regulations was highlighted in a letter issued to the FAA by a group of attorneys, medical doctors and other experts on 15th December 2021, noting the serious adverse reactions to covid vaccines being experienced by pilots (including death) and asking for specific health checks on all vaccinated pilots.

The letter asks that all vaccinated pilots be medically flagged and:

“having said pilots undergo thorough medical re-examinations to include D-Dimer tests (to check for blood clotting problems), Troponin tests (to check for Troponin in the blood, which is a protein that is released when the heart muscle has been damaged), post-vaccination ECG analysis (also known as EKG, which checks the electrical signals which determine cardiac health), and cardiac MRI and PULS Test (to determine heart health).

According to the letter’s authors, inclusion of the cardiac MRI as a screening test for pilots is critical and referenced a recent study showed that using only ECG results and symptoms to screen patients resulted in a 7.4-fold under-diagnosing of actual myocarditis. The PULS Test is also important as an abstract published in the medical journal Circulation, entitled “Observational Findings of PULS Cardiac Test Findings for Inflammatory Markers in Patients Receiving mRNA Vaccines”, found that “the mRNA vacs [vaccines] numerically increase … the markers IL-16, Fas, and HGF, all markers previously described by others for denoting inflammation on the endothelium and T cell infiltration of cardiac muscle”.

The letter’s authors also reference an affidavit filed in a US court earlier this year, where doctors including the cardiologist retained by the FAA and a Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army who is a flight surgeon, Aerospace Medicine Specialist, and an Aviation Officer Course & Mishap Training Specialist with a Master’s Degree in Public Health, concluded that

  • “the risk of “post-vaccination myocarditis was not trivial”
  • “that the “aviation population is comprised of individuals with demographics that the CDC and FDA established (on June 25, 2021) was at greatest risk for developing post-vaccination induced myocarditis”
  • “that the “unpredictable and potential serious complications thereof present an … unacceptable level of aeromedical risk,”
  • that “risk-stratification, screening and diagnostic testing is necessary for continued safety of
    flight,” and
  • that “immunizations with COVID vaccinations should be immediately suspended until
    further aviation specific studies can be conducted.”

It is worth noting that coincidental to the issuance of this letter to the FAA, NZ’s Ministry of Health issued an urgent letter to all primary healthcare providers and vaccinators. The letter admitted that incidences of vaccine-associated myocarditis and pericarditis have been under-reported in NZ and that the actual incidence, particularly for boosters, is not known. Instructions were also issued to include warnings on those serious side effects specifically, to those receiving the covid vaccines.

Implications for Airline Passengers

Clearly, serious vaccine-associated adverse reactions can be life-altering to those who suffer them. However the consequences for airline passengers if their pilots experience sudden effects are also devastating. The letter to the FAA points out that

“… should the FAA fail to ground and medically de-certify all pilots who have received experimental and non-FDA approved COVID-19 vaccines in accordance with CFR §65.13 and related Guidance which require this result – and bar reinstatement of such pilots until such time as they can show aeromedically acceptable D-Dimer, Troponin, ECGs, cardiac MRIs, PULS tests and clean bills of health – the FAA will be putting many innocent airline passengers’ lives in harm’s way in the event a pilot loses control of his aircraft after suffering a major bloodclotting event (pulmonary embolism, stroke, etc.) or a myocarditis-related event, either of which can result in incapacitation, cardiac arrest, and death.”

Many airlines, including Air NZ, have extra aircrew mandatorily on all flights (most trans-Tasman and Pacific routes are also only 2 crew for Air NZ). This redundancy in crew is to mediate against serious medical emergencies incapacitating the primary crew and placing the flight at risk.

This is primarily for inflight rest requirements because they need to have horizontal rest away from the controls, so the other flight crew members can rotate through the flight deck. Depending on the distance of the route, airline, and various other factors, some airlines may carry a full extra crew, or just another 2nd officer etc. Airlines are using this as their fall-back position having concluded that it would be highly unlikely that more than one crew member would suffer a vaccination induced injury (or any other medical event) during a flight, therefore the extra crew members serve more than one purpose. On domestic or short haul routes however, no extra crew are carried, so a medical event suffered by a pilot would place the flight in a high-risk category as the entire flying and communication duties now have to be carried out by one pilot, putting them under a high stress workload. If the captain were to suffer the incapacitation, and they happened to be with a junior first officer with low experience, this could be even worse.

However there are still certain key periods during flights where a major seizure, such as has already been experienced by a US pilot following a covid injection (but not in flight) would still place the flight at significant risk. The letter goes on to highlight this.

“… a seizure that creates massive muscle stiffening and jerking of large muscle groups could be catastrophic if the pilot were on approach for landing, and actively flying the plane only a few hundred feet above the runway. A vaccinated pilot who suffers such a full-blown tonic-clonic seizure while on approach – such that the pilot could not maintain level control of the plane a few hundred feet above the tarmac, and uncontrollably and inadvertently dipped a wing thus causing the plane to cartwheel down the runway at landing – would likely cause not just massive injury and death to innocent passengers, but also create shocking monetary liability for the airline company and insurance carriers, potentially extending into the hundreds of millions USD.”

In 2014, Air NZ had an incident where a 787 captain suffered a brain aneurism (from natural causes) immediately after landing the aircraft and died a few days later. Had that happened moments earlier, that could have had far more devastating results.

Australia’s Graham Hood, a former Qantas airline pilot and now motivational speaker, has provided a list of incidents within the airline industry in Australia that had either been sent to him or involved people he knew personally. This list is contained in a video he posted on 8th December 2021. Where the airline is not specifically mentioned for a case, it has been assumed to be Qantas.

Date Airline Job Incident Description
Jul 2021 Jetstar Captain 51 yr old, fit triathlete. Died from heart attack following 2nd Pfizer jab.
Aug 2021 Qantas Captain High blood pressure from 2nd AstraZeneca jab
Aug/Sep 2021 Qantas Captain A330 had to be diverted to Darwin as captain had heart palpitations
5 Sep 2021 Qantas 737 Co-Pilot Blood clot in lower leg during flight from Perth to Hobart
15 Sep 2021 Virgin Captain Continually unwell

Flying in Perth in adverse weather conditions

Uses 5-day sick day rule to circumvent getting designated medical examiner clearance

1 Oct 2021 Qantas Domestic Flight Attendant Collapsed at her station inflight and had to be defibrillated, followed 2nd jab
4 Oct 2021 Virgin Pilot Now on long-term sick leave for myocarditis following 1st jab
Oct 2021 Network Aviation F100 Captain Brain aneurysm

In coma, off life support, terminal prognosis

7 Oct 2021 Virgin Pilot Brisbane-based, heart palpitations after 1st jab, now on long-term sick leave
15 Oct 2021 Virgin Pilot Myocarditis following jab

Now on long-term sick leave

18 Oct 2021 Qantas 737 1st Officer Pulmonary embolism after 2nd Pfizer jab

Off on sick leave for 5 months

21 Oct 2021 Qantas Passenger Employee at Fortescue Christmas Creek Mine collapsed from a heart attack on the plane while heading back to Perth. Recently had 2nd Pfizer jab.
30 Oct 2021 Virgin Flight Attendant Heart attack on flight during descent
1 Nov 2021 Qantas 737 Pilot Chronic agonising joint inflammation following 2nd jab
4 Nov 2021 Qantas Emergency Procedures Instructor Collapsed at UK base during a training course
5 Nov 2021 Qantas Captain Developed a fist-sized cold sore on his face

In hospital for 3 days, narrowly avoiding sepsis

13 Nov 2021 Qantas Technical staff Cardiac event after 1st Pfizer jab

Cardiologist advises not to take 2nd jab but Qantas has refused medical exemption

Now struggling to climb a set of stairs even weeks afterwards, was usually a very fit person, vegetarian non-smoker non-drinker and young

    Perth Airport fireman Blood clot in his hand from 2nd Pfizer jab
30 Nov 2021 Qantas Apprentice Engineer In hospital from 1st jab

Has been advised to have his 2nd jab in hospital with a medical team standing by in case of adverse reaction

2 Dec 2021 Qantas Flight Attendant Adelaide-based. Died 3 days after 2nd jab.
5 Dec 2021 Jetstar 737 Check Captain Lost his medical clearance after booster shot

Heart had to be defibrillated back to rhythm

 

Pilots are now questioning why airlines are encouraging and mandating a medical treatment that is clearly increasing the chances of a pilot suffering such a catastrophic medical event, and placing passengers, aircraft, people on the ground, and other crew at risk.

The landscape for covid vaccines and the pandemic is constantly and rapidly changing. Already, Merck & Pfizer are marketing oral therapeutics and multiple countries, including NZ, have placed forward orders for those before the clinical trials are complete. With so much and so many lives at stake, perhaps it is time for major transport carriers to pause, reassess the real risks at play and truly, make passengers’ safety the top priority.

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