Emirates will today operate its first flight with a fully-vaccinated frontline team servicing customers at every touchpoint of the travel journey.

This morning, the full airport and onboard customer experience for flight EK215, which departed Dubai at 08:30 for Los Angeles, was safely supported by check-in, security, business and first-class lounge and boarding gate employees, as well as engineers, pilots and cabin crew who made the choice to be fully vaccinated.

Also supporting the operation were fully vaccinated aircraft appearance, loading and special handling teams from dnata, as well as Emirates SkyCargo teams working on the cargo and logistics requirements for EK215.

The Emirates Group rolled out its vaccination drive at pace just over a month ago, and since then, close to 26,000, or 44 per cent, of the UAE-based frontline aviation workforce have received both doses of either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Sinopharm vaccines.

Adel Al Redha, chief operating officer, Emirates Airline, said: “Our operational workforce are at the aviation frontline, helping people get to where they need to be, and moving essential goods to global communities.

“Protecting our people with vaccinations is important – for them, for our community, for the smooth running of our operations, and also for our customers as it introduces of an additional layer of protection when they travel with us.”

Nearly 5,000 cabin and flight deck crew have opted to receive both doses of the Covid-19 vaccine.

Etihad and Singapore Airlines have both also seen early successes in their vaccination efforts.