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 chief executive 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.

In a 4 March memo, ground staff were warned of “a couple of occurrences where a driver on the ramp has made contact with a refueling hose”, though no fuel spill had resulted.

“If fuel is spilled on the tarmac, it can create an ignition source and … can increase the risk of a serious event occurring.”

Swissport workers were warned twice in April about firearms being left on the general baggage carousel.

“There has been an increase of incidents where firearms have been incorrectly offloaded onto the arrival’s carousel, rather than delivered to baggage services,” employees were told in a 30 April memo.

“These are serious security breaches, since these items are left unattended on the arrival’s carousel, which is open to the general public, effectively allowing anyone to pick the item up and walk away.”

Procedures for handling firearms were overhauled in July, the documents show.

“A recent event occurred where a set of manual passenger stairs were removed from the aircraft while the passenger door remained open,” Swissport said in a 9 January safety memo.

Other issues raised in the memos include staff breaking speed limits in baggage areas and leaving debris that can damage jet engines on the airfield.

The documents also show Swissport acknowledging it was unable to meet demand for flights that has surged following the end of pandemic restrictions.

“The business is acutely aware that our human resource levels are simply not at a sustainable level to meet the ongoing demand from the airlines,” the company’s general manager at Sydney airport said in a 23 March letter to employees.

Swissport tried to increase the number of people at work, buying out annual leave and offering recruitment bonuses to workers who refer new employees.

The Transport Workers’ Union wrote to the Civil Aviation Safety Authority and the Australian Transport Safety Bureau on Monday seeking a “thorough safety investigation into Qantas’ ground handling supply chain, including an examination of its agreements with the three labour hire companies”.

Michael Kaine, the secretary of the TWU, said the situation was “a disaster waiting to happen”.

“We would rather sound the alarm than, in the event of a catastrophic event, be accused of remaining silent,” he said.

“The mass exodus of skilled workers and deliberate fragmentation by Joyce-led Qantas has led to vast understaffing, inexperience and a lack of training, leading to a raft of serious safety incidents.”

A Swissport spokesperson said the company “has one of the strongest safety cultures in the industry” and encourages staff to report all possible safety issues.

“It is therefore disappointing for the TWU to use internal messages to our team to undermine that safety culture,” the spokesperson said.

Qantas also attacked the union.

“Specialist ground handlers have a lower rate of incidents compared to when this work was done in-house,” a company spokesperson said.

“The TWU didn’t have the same level of concern about these incidents before this work was outsourced. Only since the outsourcing are they commenting publicly on these incidents and the travelling public deserves to be cynical about that.

“This kind of behaviour is hypocritical and undermines the strong safety culture that exists throughout Australian aviation. We operate in one of the most closely regulated industries in Australia and are subject to considerable oversight from numerous authorities, including CASA.”