PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - BA CC industrial relations (current airline staff only)
Old 3rd Apr 2011, 10:47
  #3736 (permalink)  
Yellow Pen
 
Join Date: Sep 2010
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Germs in the cabin

Lets put this 'germs in the cabin' thing to bed. There has been plenty of research on air quality in the cabin, not just in terms of bacteria but also into toxic oil compounds, so here are a few facts:

There are no more germs in an aircraft cabin than in an average large office.

The air in an aircraft cabin is refreshed at 4 times the rate of standard office air conditioning systems.

You are in closer contact with more people with germs if you commute on the tube to work or go to the cinema.

Pilots breathe the same air as cabin crew (on the 747 it comes via Pack 2 and the recirc fans) but have lower sickness rates.

If somebody hands you a bag full of vomit then germs can be killed by washing your hands.


Excuses about dirty air and dirty passengers are just that - excuses. The air is not the cause, the passengers germs are most unlikely to be the cause unless they sneeze directly into your face. If dirty air or dirty passengers were the cause we'd see a genuine level of sicknesss evenly distributed across the workforce and across the year, with an uptrend in winter when colds thrive. Instead what we see are some crew who are never ill, a lot who are ill frequently, uptrends towards the weekends and school holidays and huge spikes over public holdays and social events. These trends are totally inconsistent with data on public health.

MissM has half admitted the problem is social sickness due to the absence of a bidding system, but that's not the whole story. Pilots have a bidding system, and the guys at the bottom who never get a weekend off still have better sickness rates. The other half of the problem is the poor attitude towards attendance. We've all heard the term 'the charity Paris' on EF, a poor allowance paying trip that people think isn't worth doing. Similar trips exist on WW and require a destination payment. It's the belief that some people have that they have no obligation to turn up to work if it's inconvenient for them that drives CC sickness rates skyward.
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