Forum: SIA crew who represent Singapore deserve better protection

That a group of grown men found a woman’s distress amusing rather than alarming says something troubling about how lightly this kind of behaviour is regarded, even by witnesses. Left unaddressed, this culture of complicity may simply repeat itself on the next flight, with the next crew member.

My family has served as SIA crew, and I know how exposed that role is – confined spaces, no easy way to remove yourself from a threatening passenger, and an expectation of professionalism regardless of what’s happening to you.

A sentence this light doesn’t protect the crew. It tells them, and every future passenger, that this is simply the cost of the uniform.

Singapore is rightly known globally for the severity of its sentencing in areas such as drug trafficking. That same seriousness in protecting the country’s borders should surely apply to an assault on crew who represent Singapore abroad.

I implore Singapore’s courts, and Singapore Airlines itself, to reconsider whether this sentence reflects the seriousness of the act, and what it says about how the country protects those who represent it.

Sandeep Hans