Aviation and employee safety
In recent years the focus regarding the safety of airline employees, including cabin crew, has been in relation to the threat of a terrorist attack. However, a recent study commissioned by a major international airline found that while security and terrorism threats made up 12% of the safety risk incidents affecting cabin crew, it was in fact drunken and irate passengers that posed the greater ongoing and recurring threat, registering 20% of the incidents.
Duncan Chappell, Chair of the National Committee on Violence for the Australian Institute of Criminology, reports that some sections of the community believe that violence in the workplace has increased resulting in justifiable anxieties regarding personal safety in some public contact workers, including flight attendants.
Given that occupational health and safety legislation across Australia requires employers to provide a safe work environment for its employees and others in the employer’s workplace, airline operators need to put in place systems for controlling the risk posed by violent passengers.
Most major airline employers have in place regular “security training” for staff, which is designed to assist flight attendants in dealing with irate passengers and those who display threatening and potentially violent behaviour.
However, given that violent behaviour has been unidentified as a foreseeable workplace hazard it may not be enough for employer’s to rely on security training as evidence that it has done everything that is reasonably practicable to control the risk to employees.
Applying a risk management approach it may be necessary for airline operators to implement systems that eliminate the risk, including:
- ensuring the stressors that contribute to passenger behaviour (cabin baggage restrictions, cancelled flights and delays) are better controlled;
- identifying and controlling irate and/or drunk passengers prior to the passenger boarding the aircraft; and
- identifying high risk groups (football teams, gang members etc) and controlling the risk of violence or anti-social behaviour occurring on the aircraft by separating individuals or groups.
Controllers of airport terminals may also need to look at ways of making terminals safer for workers and members of the public in light of the recent violent incidents by ensuring fixtures are not able to be used as a weapon (e.g. install crowd control equipment made of lightweight materials, if this is not practicable ensure they are fixed in place).
It is important that employers and controllers take a holistic approach to safety and attempt to control any risk of violent behaviour towards cabin staff. As identified above, preventing the offending passenger from boarding the plane in the first place may results in the risk being eliminated.
Written by Michael Connolly, Special Counsel
