Firearms on baggage carousels and bags crushed: internal memos reveal Qantas ground safety incidents

Staff loading Qantas flights have been injured, a staircase rolled away from a plane while the cabin door was open, baggage containers have been damaged and firearms have been left unattended on carousels, according to internal memos released by the Transport Workers’ Union. The safety memos, which date from between January and July this year, were written by managers at Swissport, which took over baggage handling for Qantas in December after the airline sacked 2,000 workers in an outsourcing move the federal court found was illegal. Qantas has consistently denied it did anything unlawful and is appealing the decision. Qantas said the release of the memos was a “cynical” move by the union, and claimed specialist ground handlers now have a lower rate of safety incidents compared with previous years. It follows chaos at airports over the past several months that has left Qantas passengers stranded overseas, resulted in 10% of bags at Sydney’s domestic terminal failing to make their flights, sent queues snaking around airports and damaged the airline’s public image, forcing CE Alan Joyce to apologise. In January, a Swissport worker was injured after getting their hand caught under a box. “The cargo item fell on top of the hold operators finger, resulting in a crush like injury to the finger,” Swissport said in a 17 January memo. In another incident a container being loaded on to a flight run by Qantas’s budget subsidiary Jetstar “containing over 30 passenger bags was crushed and torn open”, a 17 July Swissport memo reveals.<br/>