BKKROP

An army of blue clad women with white aprons and masks awaited our arrival, and for a moment I thought we were all going to be disinfected with Jiff or amonia, sprayed and asked to walk through a dip, but once the passengers had departed, the swarm entered the cabin. The whole plane was cleaned by 20-30 lasses and we were all handed face masks and tissues. We were shepherded pass screens that took our temperature, and ominously awaiting alongside each screen were another dozen medical clad personnel, waiting eagerly for anyone to sneeze so they could be "extracted".

Bangkok's lounges were patrolled by scores of austere men with neat wooden boxes full of aerosol cans of potent germ killing ingredients and the spa ladies had that "health shop" aroma about them.

Anyone with a sniffle was met with frowns and a path miraclously appeared before them like the biblical parting of the Red sea.

But when you think this might just be a little over the top, you land in Hong Kong and Bangkok pales into insignificance. HongKong airport looks like the ER waiting room, even the money exchangers had masks on, and people followed you looking for tell tale signs of lozenges wrappings or the aroma of Vicks vaporub.

It's all good, please don't take me the wrong way, it's just that we get so used to being able to afford to put a couple of persons on the job, in Asia, they deplore hundreds, and the military precision of how it all works is so impressive and overpowering at the same time. The flu by whichever name it is today doesn't have a chance here!, regards bkkrop

Aussie_flyer

there are some pics on nationmultimedia.com today of the crews disinfecting an A345 from LAX at BKK. I guess the asians are already fully aware of what can happen from SARS and it really shows now.

moocherx

To be fair, some TG aircraft could do with a good clean.

jfh1107

Agreed! Flu or not, shouldn't they be doing this anyway?

Andesw

That's so true, SARS that were outbreak few years really hurt in a bad way.
Hong Kong has the worse of all
I guess they really don't want anything to happen near their country again.

tlongdon

It's just a token gesture at BKK Suvarnabhumi.

Arrive 6am Saturday, C9, walked the length of the walkways to see a large long queue at the end, with a long line of passengers being checked, just before a small set of immigtation counters I've never seen before.

Asked a Thai official where fast track was (sort of as a joke, but mostly to bypass this long line)...she pointed me round to left, towards the main immigration counters at the centre of the airport. No lines, no health checks, and that was the normal immigration counters, not the CIP fast trackc ones.

I wonder if we were all supposed to line up for the health checks? Any of the passengers waiting impatiently in line could easily have followed me.

jiejie

This sounds pretty similar to what BKK did with SARS in 2003. I was living in Beijing during that time and in late April 2003 after all hell had broken loose, flew PEK-BKK on a flight that had been scheduled long in advance. I think there were only a couple dozen people on the plane (TG)--almost all Thais or expat farangs (few Chinese as the Chinese gov't had cancelled outbound travel for all its citizens except officials on critical business). This was in Don Muang Terminal days. The plane parked outside the very end gate of the terminal...we were not allowed a jetway but had to do things the old-fashioned way, down the rollup steps, and across the tarmac to the terminal door, where we were met with a couple of dozen gowned and masked medical personnel, with body temperature detectors, thermometers, the works. That end of the terminal was shut off to everybody else. I saw a couple of people pulled out of the line for more intensive examination, but other than a bit of a gauntlet and a brief questioning, nothing too onerous. Back then, Thai gov't had threatened 14 day quarantine for everybody coming from China (sick or not), but they didn't carry this out. After the gauntlet inside the terminal door, we were allowed to proceed to immigration.

TGflyer

I see this as a good precaution many government would undertake during a flu outbreak.

dsquared37

Its nothing more than posturing. No government wants their people to feel like they are doing nothing when international press is fear mongering.

MAN Flyer

I don't think TG can make their mind up about what to do with this flu.

I just did three flights with them in the last week. BKK-SGN last Friday and everything normal. Then for SGN-BKK on Sunday morning we were met with the entire crew wearing face masks, and they kept them on all the way until we disembarked in BKK. It was like being in a flying hospital ward.

Presuming that they had decided this was the way they had decided to go, I was then surprised on Monday morning to board my flight to KUL to see not a single crew member wearing a mask.

Was it just a paranoid crew/leader ex-SGN ?, do they think everyone leaving Vietnam is potentially dangerous ? (Flu wise, of course. ), or was it typical left hand, right hand ?