ASSOCIATIONS
At the beginning of this research project in late1994, there was very little global activity in the area of airline baggage handler injury prevention and it was realised that support of industry groups would be needed. Accordingly, both the Australasian Airlines Ground Safety Council and the International Air Transport Executive (ARTEX) of the National Safety Council of America were asked to support this research project. Both organisations responded very favourably and their support of the project throughout was invaluable.
In 1995, ARTEX reconstituted its ergonomics sub-committee which had been dormant since the mid 1980’s and gave this research project its full support and backing by appointing the author to the chairmanship of its ergonomics sub-committee. This helped generate momentum in the project and gave it optimum status for the reluctant airlines, aircraft manufacturers and aircraft ground support equipment manufacturers to take the project seriously.
To foster interest in the project, and in the issue of airline baggage handler injuries itself, in the period from early 1995 to 2000, twenty presentations were conducted as part of this project at aviation safety conferences around the world, and at the major jet transport aircraft manufacturers and aircraft ground support equipment manufacturers in Europe and USA (see Appendix No. 2 for details).
In the USA, the only interest in the matter prior to 1995 seemed to have been the ARTEX research (ARTEX 1981) which apparently had not been published. In Europe, only the Scandinavian airlines, had been investigating the problem, as described in Chapter 1.
In 1995, a series of meetings were organised by the author at the major aircraft manufacturers. Each meeting commenced with the presentation of the discussion paper (see Appendix No. 1) after which the attendees were asked their responses to the four research questions related to the manufacturers’ prior awareness or experience of the baggage handler injury problem. Table 3.1 outlines the responses of the standard question sets put to the
manufacturers’ representatives at each meeting.
Table 3.1
The Initial Response of the Aircraft Manufacturers
Question Boeing, Seattle, USA Airbus, Toulouse, France McDonnell Douglas, Long Beach, USA BAE Avro, Woodford, UK Fokker, Amsterdam, Holland30
Were they aware of the problem of manual handling injuries to airline baggage handlers?
NO NO NO NO NO
Were they taking any action to address the problem?
NO NO NO NO NO
Were they aware of any other organisations working on the baggage handling injury issue? 31
NO2 NO2 NO2 NO2 NO2
Were they willing to review their aircraft baggage compartment designs?
NO NO NO NO NO
Would they participate in activities to help develop lasting solutions?
YES YES NO YES YES
Attendees Key:
Boeing: Chief Engineer Airplane Safety Engineering, Group Manager Safety Health and Environmental
Affairs, Senior Airplane Safety Engineer, Manager Ground Operations Support, Manager B737 and B757 Engineering, Group Environmental Manager, Ground Support Equipment and Facilities Engineer
Airbus: Senior Interiors Design Engineer, Interiors Design Engineer and Customer Service Engineer McDonnell Douglas: Senior Principal Specialist Design Assurance and Safety, Group Leader Aircraft
Interiors Engineering, Interiors Systems Engineer and Senior Engineer Scientist Human Factors technology
BAE Avro: Assistant Chief Airframe Design Engineer, Senior Customer Engineer and Interiors Design Cell
Leader
Fokker: Airport Compatibility Specialist and Interiors Engineer
30
Meeting held at Sodehotel in Brussels, Belgium
31
While all manufacturers responded in the negative, all pointed to the ACE and Sliding Carpet systems as possible solutions since both were known to reduce the number of baggage handlers required to load an aircraft baggage compartment, thus theoretically reducing exposure to injury.
It was apparent that the issue of airline baggage handler injuries had not been previously raised with any of the aircraft manufacturers. Some of the senior representatives of Boeing and McDonnell Douglas were clearly sceptical, one even played down the issue in a subsequent communication (Anderson (1995)).
Also, it was obvious that the aircraft manufacturers had traditionally only interfaced with the maintenance, technical engineering and flight operations departments of their customer airlines and had little or no contact with the airports or OH&S departments. Accordingly, worker injury issues, other than flightcrew injuries, were hardly, if ever raised with the manufacturers by the airlines.
It was apparent that airline ground staff injuries were not viewed as a product liability issue for the manufacturers and no OH&S regulators had raised the issue with them before either.
None of the manufacturers envisaged solutions to the baggage handler injuries involving aircraft redesign, all claimed the costs of aircraft re-design would be too high and thought any solution lay elsewhere with ground equipment manufacturers or other third party solutions. Potential aircraft weight penalties for any solutions involving aircraft redesign were vigorously argued by all manufacturers, which were seen as commercially damaging. They all argued that increased weight from redesign would reduce aircraft performance and directly effect aircraft useability, especially at “hot and high” aerodromes.
There was consensus view expressed by all manufacturers that aircraft design would not change unless a critical mass of the customer airlines demanded change.
Airport terminal design was also clearly seen by all the manufacturers as the problem of airlines and airport authorities. No meaningful connection to the
design of the aircraft baggage compartments and systems was made by any of the manufacturers at the time of these meetings in 1995.
All manufacturers pointed toward the retrofit systems, ACE and Sliding Carpet for narrow-body aircraft. Also, they felt containerisation was the solution to the problem for wide- body aircraft. Indeed, Airbus stressed that their A320
narrow-body aircraft was also offered with an optional container system, but only slightly more than 60% of the aircraft sold to that time had been
containerised.
Notwithstanding the general negative response to the issue at these meetings, all manufacturers except McDonnell Douglas agreed to support this project and participate in finding solutions to the baggage handler injury problem. Boeing and Airbus agreed to fully participate in the ARTEX ergonomics sub- committee. All agreed to broker meetings with their relevant ground support equipment manufacturers, in particular ACE manufacturer Air Cargo
Equipment and Sliding Carpet manufacturer, Scandinavian Bellyloading.
All manufacturers requested more definitive information on the magnitude of the baggage handler injury problem, especially in relation to costs. They were equally interested to gain an understanding of the mechanisms of injury, particularly in relation to aircraft and aircraft systems design.
Both Fokker and McDonnell Douglas took no further part in the project, both being declared bankrupt within 12 months of these meetings.