EDITOR’S THOUGHTS
TAKING STEPS
With the arrival of the New Year has come fresh evidence that the
ramp remains a dangerous place in which to work.
Shortly before this issue went to press, news emerged of a fall
from height involving a crew member of a Finnair A320 aircra . e
aircra had arrived at Helsinki, the passengers had deplaned but when
the cabin crew member opened the exit door, she fell 3.5 metres on to the
tarmac, sustaining bone fractures in the process. e incident is currently
under investigation by the relevant authorities and will surely centre on
why the stairs had been removed from the aircra .
But this incident is merely the latest in a list: six people fell from the
top of a set of boarding stairs at Barnaul airport in Russia last year whilst
emplaning a Ural Airlines ight to Moscow. In this instance the stairs
collapsed, resulting in the hospitalisation of three passengers. And in 2018
Emirates Airlines su ered a fatality when a crew
member fell from a parked aircra at Entebbe
airport while preparing the aircra for boarding.
ree cases in three years; there are quite possibly
more that have not been documented, since not all
aviation authorities make public their incident data.
Whatever the nal number, the fact remains that
such fundamental errors should not feature in the
price of air travel. In an age that agonises over the
niceties of gender appellation it seems ironical to
this writer that a subject so important as basic safety
“… the ramp
remains a
dangerous
place in which
to work”
can be relegated to the back seat. Without a doubt, the woman who fell
from the Finnair aircra was extremely lucky: death is not an uncommon
consequence in these cases.
All of which raises that age-old question: what is being done to address
this situation? I wrote in the last issue of 2019 that the aviation world was
looking towards a safer place but given the above litany of accidents, I
shall have to reconsider those words. SOPs, training, manuals, specialised
conferences and refresher courses all abound – but these alone are
seemingly not enough to prevent mishap.
To err is human – but perhaps erring on the side of caution on the ramp
should become standard practice.
Editor Alwyn Brice
alwyn@groundhandling.com
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CONTRIBUTORS
Dimitry Peters, Jonathan Stern & Vladislav Vorotnikov
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ISSN Number: 1364 – 8330 PRINT
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4 February 2020 Ground Handling International
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