Measures to facilitate crew changes during COVID-19 pandemic

05 Apr 2020 / United Arab Emirates

The Federal Transport Authority (FTA) has decided on lifting the ship’s crew change restrictions gradually, and in the first stage under special circumstances the priorities will be given to:

  1. Seafarers with resident visa who are stuck on board their ships.
  2. Crews of passenger ships currently laid up in UAE.
  3. Crew who are no longer medically fit to work onboard the ship.
  4. Seafarers with urgent medical or humanitarian cases.

In order to implement the above, the following requirements must be met:

  1. The seafarer should be on board a ship which has left her last international port at least 14 days ago, and there was no contact with any person outside the ship from outside UAE in the last 14 days.

  2. Providing air ticket for the seafarer.

  3. Submitting a medical statement for the seafarer suffering from the health condition that he is not fit to serve on board the ship and he is able to travel on the flight to his home country.

All port authorities, ship managers, operators, agents and any person involved in providing services to seafarers should ensure that the crew change will not violate the minimum safe manning requirements document determined by the flag state authority.

FTA will review global health developments and the smooth flow of global air traffic from time to time, and will gradually reduce these requirements to ensure the return to normal procedures of crew change in UAE as soon as possible.

For further clarification, please contact: [email protected]

(For information about operations in the United Arab Emirates, contact GAC at [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] or [email protected])

Source: Federal Transport Authority – Land & Maritime Circular No (7) 2020 dated 5 April 2020

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