At the beginning of this research project in the mid 1990’s, only one previous study was available, that by Lundgren et al (1988) which looked at just one airline’s baggage handler injury costs at a single Scandinavian airport, concerning the magnitude of the problem of injuries to airline baggage
handlers. There was no previous literature identifying the costs of airline back injuries as a subset. Phase 2 of this project established beyond doubt that there were significant ongoing costs associated with these injuries.
The cost and injury frequency data included in Table 3.2 was the first published information on the costs of airline baggage handler back injuries across a reasonable sample of the global industry. This study showed the costs compensation, medical expenses and rehabilitation in 16 major airlines to be US$17.6m, US$23.6m, US$21.7m in the three years 1992 to 1994. Culvenor (2004) reported that Qantas alone had baggage handler back injury costs, for compensation alone, of over US$10m (A$14.1m) over 6 years '97 to '03. On average this would account for around US$5m in a 3 year period, around 30% of the total for sixteen major airlines just five years earlier.
Clearly, the costs associated with baggage handler injuries have been escalating.
The Lost Time Injury Frequency Rates (LTIFR) calculated from data captured in this study returned rates forty times worse than best practice as it was at that time. World’s best practice organisations, for example Du Pont (Brock 1996) and ICI Australia (ICI Australia 1996) consistently experienced LTIFRs below 1.0. This project found that injury frequency rates amongst the baggage handlers were consistently above 40.
Without the need for any further research, these consistently high incident rates should have been evidence enough that the traditional methods of prevention were inadequate.
More recently, others have published corroborative information about the magnitude and cost of baggage handlers injuries (see for example Korkmaz et al (2006), Tapley and Riley (2005), and OAIEA (2004)).
In this study, there was considerable consensus between the safety managers and the baggage handlers on a range of issues surrounding the causes and prevention of back injuries in the baggage handler workforce, as Table 4.1 shows. Narrow-body aircraft baggage compartments were considered by both groups to be the highest risk working environment and stacking of baggage in narrow-body aircraft was the task considered to be highest risk of back injury most often by both safety managers and baggage handlers alike.
Pushing baggage from the doorway into the interior of the aircraft baggage compartment, the task that is entirely eliminated by installing and using in- plane narrow-body baggage systems such as ACE and Sliding Carpet, was the task considered highest risk second most often by both safety managers and baggage handlers.
The contrast in opinion between the two groups concerning the importance of equipment maintenance is also of interest. Significantly more baggage
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handlers (121: 78%) rated equipment and aircraft maintenance a potential solution than did the safety managers (2: 13%) in this study. No doubt, the baggage handlers confront first hand the issue of poor equipment
maintenance with the need for additional heavy manual handling work, as described in Chapter 1. It’s not surprising that baggage handlers would want a solution but the reason the safety managers would rate the issue below other administrative solutions needs further investigation. However, to do so was not within the scope of this study.
All the safety managers and three quarters of the baggage handlers in this study agreed that heavy baggage was a significant concern and a limit needed to be set. The recent action by a number of airports to introduce a 32kg maximum limit on passenger baggage, reported in Chapter 1, would suggest there were many in the industry who agreed. For example, Tapley and Riley (2005), in their analysis of musculoskeletal disorder data for
baggage handlers in the UK, gave reserved support to the introduction of the 32kg limit by the industry:
” The aviation industry, however, has recently adopted a voluntary 32kg single bag weight limit, which appears, according to industry figures to be reducing the numbers of reported incidents”
Figure 4.1
Consensus of Solutions:
Safety Managers and Baggage Handlers
Solution Airline Safety
Managers n=16
Baggage Handlers n=156
Limit baggage weight and size 16 114
Provide mechanical assistance devices 14 93 Better training of baggage handlers 14 138 Introduce In-plane Stacking systems 9 122 Re-design baggage systems to account for ergonomic risk 9 111
Fitness and warm up programs 8 98
Better rostering and job rotation 3 119
Improved equipment maintenance 2 121
However, as discussed in Chapter 1, to meet contemporary ergonomic guidelines the limit would need to be less than 10kg and it’s doubtful that a 32kg limit will make a significant contribution. Indeed, some airlines who have participated in this study have had a 32kg limit in place for over 10 years and are still reporting significant injury rates amongst baggage handlers. Culvenor (2004) reported that for the six year period July 1997 to June 2003, Qantas Airways experienced 2916 baggage handler injuries that resulted in
compensation claims at a cost of $A29.6 million. Of those 1,130 were back injuries that resulted in costs of $14.1 million. All Australian airlines, including Qantas, have had a 32kg baggage limit in place since 1993. While it could be argued that the 32kg limit may have stopped the injury rates climbing higher, the Qantas experience suggests it cannot be argued to be a realistic long term solution to the problem. Furthermore, in the biomechanical modelling that was carried out in this study a 32kg load on the hands was assumed for the
purposes of calculating spinal load for each of the postures adopted by the subjects.
The greater majority of both groups also supported manual handling training as a potential solution to the back injury problem. Clearly, in most working environments, major changes to the workplace design precepts that were set by the system designers are often beyond the control of those managers and workers within that environment. Not surprisingly, workers look to solutions that are within their control and that promise improvements within the
constraints set by the designers. Baggage handler manual handling training clearly falls into that category. However, many airlines have for many years had baggage handler training programs in place, as reported in this study, yet the injuries are continuing unabated, as the recent authors have shown (see Tapley and Riley (2005), OAIEA (2004), Culvenor (2004) and Korkmaz (2006)). Further, the biomechanical manual handling loads associated with baggage handling, reported in this study, would cast doubt on the viability of training as a solution.
Effective long term intervention needs to address the baggage systems design, in particular, the design of the high risk workplaces. As Hogwood (1996) concluded:
”The narrow-body aircraft hold has been correctly identified as an ergonomic disaster……it is up to the user group to apply pressure to the manufacturers of in-hold systems for their products to be viable options”.
Prophetic words but now ten years on and nothing much seems to have changed, Hogwood’s user group, the airlines and the baggage handlers, still seem to be without an effective solution across the industry, despite a
considerable body of evidence that stacking baggage in the restricted confines of narrow body aircraft baggage compartments generates such high
musculoskeletal loads, especially in the low back, that traditional low order administrative interventions such as training and the conservative 32kg weight limit, are not effective enough to markedly reduce the injury rates.
Although the twenty ergonomists surveyed in Phase 4 of this study were not asked for an opinion on their perceptions of the overall risk of injury to baggage handlers based on the postures they observed in the MPEG video analyses, all informally commented on the extreme nature of the manual handling work and the high risk postures adopted by the trial subjects. It seems the airline safety managers and baggage handlers themselves also recognised this when rating the work in the baggage compartments the highest risk working environment and stacking baggage the highest risk task.
Design solutions to reduce the residual risk to baggage handlers clearly need to be found. The evidence for the need is now overwhelming. All previous authors, the baggage handlers, airline safety professionals, and specialist ergonomists have all agreed about the high risks involved in the work.
However, a major question remained to be answered: “Are the existing in- plane stacking system designs the answer?” Phase 3 of this study provided an answer, in part, to that question.