Paul Phelan/CAIRNS David Learmount/LONDON
AIRLINE PASSENGERS ignore safety briefings because they believe that it is the cabin crew's responsibility to protect them, according to recent research.
Professor Helen Muir, of Cranfield University in the UK, reports that surveyed passengers perceive cabin attendants as being "-primarily responsible for passenger safety in an emergency, suggesting that the lack of attention to safety information on the part of some passengers may be attributable to a belief that they need not assume responsibility for their own safety". Muir has led UK Civil Aviation Authority-sponsored research into cabin evacuation, passenger behaviour and crash survivability since the mid-1980s.
Airline marketing departments, as well as passengers, misunderstand the role of cabin crews, believing that their primary purpose is to dispense meals and hospitality rather than ensure passenger safety.
Analysis of hundreds of air accidents shows that the safety contribution of cabin crews in real emergencies may range between heroism and its reverse. Some short-haul or regional airlines would not carry any cabin crew, however, were it not for the insistence of regulators, and it is clear that their principal raison d'etre - their passenger-safety function - is far from being universally understood.
Commonest among the problems identified in research or accident investigation are cabin configuration and substructure design (eg, overhead lockers), poor crew-communication, inadequate passenger-briefing, obstruction of exits by substructure failures and in-cabin baggage, poor crew-performance caused by inadequate training, and the failure of systems such as escape slides, hatch mechanisms, lighting and public- address systems.
Opposing forces
The commercial and safety departments of airlines, because of their different tasks, often have opposing perceptions of the primary role of cabin crews (safety) and the "ideal" cabin design and layout. Marketing departments would like to dilute the content of the pre-flight passenger- briefings recommended by their operational staff, to avoid causing passengers worry about possible, if unlikely, emergency situations. They expect cabin crew to exercise their discretion about boarding passengers who carry in-cabin baggage of a bulk, weight, and diversity which owes nothing to International Civil Aviation Organisation agreed standards. Attendants are asked to move around the cabin providing refreshments, headsets, damp towels, newspapers, comfort kits and valet services to passengers as the aircraft is taxiing, at which point safety practitioners believe that they should be seated and strapped in.
An example of capitulation to the marketing perception of the cabin-crew task is that some airlines employ cabin staff who are physically too small and not strong enough to operate a Type III (overwing) exit hatch. The stewardess' uniform design can, in some cases, restrict their ability to perform crew-safety functions.
There are worrying signs that on-board physical violence by passengers against other passengers and cabin crew is increasing. This violence is often caused by alcohol or because of tensions surrounding current no-smoking policies. Most US airlines now carry plastic handcuffs to deal with the most extreme cases.
The same commercial/safety disharmonies can be found all over the world, although they are heightened in regions where rapid airline growth (and in some cases minimal regulatory oversight) accompanies vigorous commercial competitiveness and hunger for revenue.
The situation is illustrated by a recent British Airways decision about carry-on baggage. In May, the carrier developed a proposed update of its ten-year-old cabin-baggage policy, which addressed questions of safety, competition, training, passenger relations, education and pre-advice; premium-travel privileges, inter-airline "seamlessness" and regulation. Hoping to lead by example, BA announced its initiative at an Orient Airlines Association (OAA) safety seminar in Jakarta in June, where project manager Tony Mahood confidently forecast that "-British Airways will be the leader in cabin-baggage policy change, and we will offer our customers a more consistent policy than that of our competitors. It is more likely that competitors will follow our lead, rather than compete."
The BA initiative, which restated agreed limits on carry-on baggage weight and size, gave fresh hope to cabin staff that one of the most contentious issues in their daily lives was about to be solved by assertive industry leadership. Yet, less than two months later, the airline's commercial director rejected the draft strategy as being "too commercially sensitive", and Mahood again faces the task of drafting a plan which will satisfy commercial and safety constraints.
CREW FRUSTRATION
Cabin crew are increasingly frustrated at apparent global inaction on these and other important safety issues. Through accredited safety agencies and their trade unions, they are turning up the heat in search of solutions. Their modus operandi is increasingly to bring their problems under the public spotlight, placing carriers in the position of either defending or correcting safety-deficient practices. Through participation in research and through a growing presence at safety forums, cabin crew are also developing apparently viable solutions and, in most cases, also ways of steering those solutions through the commercial minefields they are likely to encounter. A growing cabin-crew presence in organisations such as the International Society of Air Safety Investigators (ISASI) has signalled that they mean business, and an ISASI cabin-safety working group has become a catalyst for growing interest.
Bev Maunsell, cabin-safety specialist with Qantas' safety department, recalls: "We were staggered by the response to the work of the cabin-safety groups and the number of people who contacted us [after a cabin-safety forum at the OAA safety committee seminar]. I think there are a lot of people who wanted information and didn't know where to get it."
Maunsell observes that, although many airlines publicly deny that they have problems in areas such as cabin baggage, they are ready to admit to major problems within the working groups, and to seek consensus over solutions. The working groups observe that the commercial forces which cause the trouble can only be overturned by strict regulatory oversight.
If every passenger on a Boeing 737 carries a single cabin bag of the current International Air Transport Association-recommended 1.15m-maximum dimensions, the last ten to 15 passengers will find that there is nowhere to store their bags, simply because the overhead locker space will already be full, and a bag of that size will not fit safely or comfortably under the seat.
Often part of the first meeting between cabin crew and the passenger, the question of cabin baggage is high on the list of safety problems demanding solutions. While crew perceive that current laissez-faire practices are setting the stage for potential disaster in an emergency, they say it is also a catalyst for passenger aggression, does not serve an airline's commercial interests, and that subsequent violence can threaten safety. According to Maunsell: "People get very aggressive about having their baggage taken from them - more angry than is warranted in some cases." Dealing with the problem is now included in Qantas' emergency training, along with disputes over smoking, as non-smoking flights become more common.
More and more passengers want to carry their baggage in the cabin because of their reasonable suspicions over poor security or mishandling of checked-in baggage. They resist surrendering their cabin baggage, which is rarely lockable, and is vulnerable to tampering, damage, or mishandling. Both problems were recognised and addressed by British Airways' aborted draft strategy, which proposed sealable bags into which hand-baggage could be placed before sending it to the baggage hold.
Cabin crew insist that, if uniform cabin-baggage rules were applied to all carriers' passengers by an outside agency such as airside security, enforcement would then be seen by passengers to be not the initiative of the airline, but of the air-safety regulator; then the competition between carriers could be re-focused on issues identified by BA - those of baggage-handling performance and non-contentious implementation practices, with what Mahood believes would be a net commercial gain.
SAFETY BRIEFINGS
The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) says that better-briefed passengers have a better chance of survival. Quoted examples range from inability to find, extract, fasten or inflate life jackets, to disorientation and panic because of inability to locate exits.
Muir says that 80% of passengers surveyed thought that airlines should encourage passengers to be more safety conscious, citing cabin baggage, the banning of smoking, carriage of alcohol and duty-free goods, "-making briefings more interesting and varied", and the promotion of safety education.
Qantas' cabin-safety briefings are modelled on the work of the NTSB's Nora Marshall. Cabin crew now conduct their briefings "interactively" with a video. An attraction of video briefings to some airlines has been that it liberates cabin crew for other duties, a formula which safety specialists reject, insists Maunsell: "Our cabin crew stand up and do parts of the demonstration; originally they were just mirroring the video, which they hated. Marshall found instances where the crew had been totally ignored in emergencies, and she believed that the advent of video as a substitute had contributed to that, saying: "The cabin crew are no longer being marginalised as the safety-responsible people. We have to keep our crew up front; you need a uniform that looks like a uniform, so it's recognisable in an emergency."
Certification requires that overhead bins should withstand a 9G static load at their approved maximum loading. Although the G-rating of seats has been lifted from 9 to 16, dynamic testing of bins is not yet required. The US Federal Aviation Administration and NTSB are now researching new specifications. The NTSB says of a study on the crashworthiness of cabin furnishings: "In the cases examined, the basic designs or failures of overhead bins allowed items stored there to become missiles during the crash sequences, in some cases incapacitating [missiles]. Emergency evacuation was also hampered when items stored in overhead bins were released. Even items such as blankets, pillows and coats, which are unlikely to cause injury when they become loose, were thrown into the aisles and against bulkheads adjacent to the exits, creating barriers to exits." The NTSB records also that the collapsed bins themselves have caused obstructions.
The Boeing 747-400 which overshot the runway at Hong Kong in November 1993 suffered deceptively little visible external damage, yet relatively slight ovoid distortion of the forward fuselage caused most of the overhead lockers in the unoccupied nose (first class) compartment to separate from the structure and collapse on to the seats below. Had the compartment been occupied, and had the overhead lockers carried a typical load of cabin baggage, serious injury could have resulted.
A recurrent hazard is items which fall in normal flight from bins which have either not been properly closed or have been opened by passengers in flight, causing serious head-injury and even death. Cabin staff blame flimsy catches, which in most cases bear the entire weight of the locker door and its contents, along with the excessive weight of cabin baggage and, in some cases, its bulk.
EXIT DESIGN AND OPERATION
According to Muir's research, the time taken to remove and dispose of a Type III emergency hatch in typical emergencies varies notably according to both its weight (which can range between about 12.5kg and 25kg), and whether there is a disabled person in the adjacent seat. The study also observes that the heavier the hatch, the greater the difference in time of operation between males and females.
Muir recommends that the seat immediately adjacent to a Type III hatch is occupied by "a fit and healthy male," and some carriers are already adding a requirement for fluency in the airline's national language. In some cultures, where it is expected that males in an emergency may push females aside - even uniformed ones - rather than obey their directions, female crew are trained to recruit male passengers in situations, such as the need to bar access to a door outside of which there is fire.
There are already many widely quoted examples of incidents where cabin crew, in possession of crucial safety information (such as excessive snow on the wings of a Canadian Fokker F28 before a fatal take-off, and flame coming from an engine of the British Midland Boeing 737-400 which crashed on the approach to UK East Midlands Airport), failed to tell the flightcrew because of uncertainty about its relevance, or a perception because of hierarchal pilot/cabin crew attitudes that it "-wasn't their business".
Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS) manager of inflight services Unni Voll is not alone in insisting that joint pilot- and cabin-crew training is the solution; a concept which does not always find favour with flightcrew, who have little enthusiasm for "flying" simulator line-oriented flight-training (LOFT) with several flight attendants looking over their shoulders. While Voll protests that pilots and flight attendants sometimes never even meet before a flight, pilots reply that it is equally common for a captain and a first officer not to have met before reporting for duty; and that standard operating procedures should make that irrelevant.
Joint pilot/flight-attendant (FA) training, especially in emergency procedures, is most advanced in regional airlines, where mutual reliance is probably at its highest level because of small crew-complements. In varying degrees, major carriers are also beginning to involve cabin crew in LOFT exercises.
The growth of regional airlines has brought into sharp focus the problems uniquely facing solo cabin-crew members in small aircraft - a topic prompting a special meeting of a cabin-safety working group of Australian ISASI members: "Violence against flight attendants is now reaching epidemic proportions," says Michael von Reth, the Australian FA Association's health and safety delegate. Australian regulations require a second FA for more than 36 passengers, while the US critical number is 50. The rule varies in other countries.
"Single-FA aircraft are not just smaller versions of the big guys," notes Lisa Kearns of Trans World Express, quoting a litany of hair-raising passenger incidents aboard US aircraft. "They present distinctly different operational and training challenges. When I ask the FAs who have flown for us and the majors what the biggest difference for them was, most said it was psychological." Kearns says the most common factor of concern is isolation from peer-support in emergencies, and that the solutions lie in staff selection and training. "We place increased emphasis on certain things which may not be as important in a multi-FA aircraft. Immediate leadership ability, confidence, self-motivation, a conscience, physical fitness, critical-thinking skills and the ability to learn quickly and adapt are just as important to us as solid customer-service skills," she says.
Kearns also insists on initial and recurrent training, and back-up well beyond federal requirements, including considerable hands-on training, comprehensive and useable manuals, observation flights during training, FA participation in advanced crew-resource-management training, and limitation initially to currency on only two types.
TRAINING AND LICENSING
In every aspect, from the soothing of pugnacious passengers to emergency crowd control in the evacuation of a smoke-filled cabin, improved training and intelligent regulation are the most commonly proposed solutions.
The ISASI cabin-safety working group proposes a licensing system for FAs, both as a means of setting and monitoring minimum competency levels, and as a medium in which to establish a regulatory framework covering syllabi, qualifications, and a check and training system.
In today's competitive airline environment, only common regulatory agreement will ever achieve that, Voll notes: "Safety is something our passengers take for granted, something that is included in the price. To ensure that it will remain included and to prevent false economy ruling the skies, standards must be set and, once in operation, they need to be enforced and licences removed from carriers which do not meet the required standards.
Source: Flight International
