Forum: SIA crew who represent Singapore deserve better protection

Singapore Airlines is not just an airline – it is one of the country’s most visible global ambassadors. Its crew represent Singapore to the world.

When a passenger corners and assaults a flight attendant after she explicitly told him to stop, and the resulting sentence is six months’ jail with $1,270.95 in compensation, the message seems to be that even on the national carrier, assaulting the people who represent the country abroad carries little consequence (Jail for man who molested SIA stewardess and harassed her during a flight, June 22).

Moreover, the conduct of Akash Tiwari’s companions is its own indictment. Watching, laughing and doing nothing to intervene, while having the power to stop him and choosing complicity instead.

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