British Airways explains 'deep regret' as it is fined £3.2 million
British Airways explains 'deep regret' as it is fined £3.2 million
One employee was left with a bleed on the brain
The two luggage handlers were hurt in separate incidents at Heathrow
(Image: Jonathan Brady/PA )
British Airways has been fined more than £3.2 million after a luggage handler suffered a bleed on the brain and another broke his back when they fell from height while working at Heathrow Airport. Two employees were injured in 'near identical' incidents just months apart while using loading equipment that did not have sufficient protection, including edge guard rails, London's Southwark Crown Court heard.
Ravinder Teji, a ground operation agent who had been with the company for seven years, suffered back injuries and cut his head after falling 1.5 metres to the ground from a televator on August 25, 2022. And Shahjahan Malik was 'seriously injured' with a bleed on the brain after plunging three metres as he used TLD elevator on March 8, 2023.
Televators and TLD elevators are machines that are used to load baggage containers into aircraft holds. Operators can be between 1.5 and 3.0 metres above ground level while they are in use.
British Airways PLC previously pleaded guilty to two breaches of Regulation 6(3) of the Work at Height Regulations 2005 in the criminal prosecution brought by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). BA was accused of failing to ensure suitable and sufficient measures were taken to protect employees.
This included those working at height who face a risk of falling a distance and being injured while using ground service equipment such as televators, for the loading and offloading of baggage from aircraft.
Judge Brendan Finucane KC said: 'I am satisfied that in both incidents the culpability was high' as he fined BA £3,208,333 and also ordered it to pay £20,935 in costs and a £120 victim surcharge. Mr Teji was dealing with luggage from a short-haul flight when he fell and was injured and he 'can remember his head hitting the ground first and curling up into a recovery position', Andrew McGee, for the HSE, told the court.
Article continues below
Mr Malik was offloading a flight from Seattle when he fell. It was snowy conditions and poor weather could potentially make using the equipment in tight spaces more difficult and liable to slips, trips and falls, the court heard. Inspectors visited in March 2022 and raised concerns which were being dealt with to try to remedy the problem but they could have been dealt with more swiftly, the court heard.
The inspector noticed there was a substantial gap between the platform of the televator and the fuselage of whatever aircraft they were dealing with. She also spotted that the televator ramp left a gap through which someone could fall with no hand rails or items to close it. The inspector's concerns were a 'clear warning' which could have been a 'red light' about the risk of the gap and safety of the equipment, according to the judge.
The judge said Mr Malik 'suffered more serious injuries', stating: 'He had what appears to have been a bleed on the brain which was obviously so serious that he was taken to a central London hospital because the local hospital could not deal with it.
'He also had a fracture to his forehead, nasal bone, a fractured jaw and scratches and bruising as a result. His jaw had to be sewn shut. He was on a fluid diet for months.
'He was on medication for a considerable period of time. He still suffers from ongoing pain and headaches from what happened to him.'
Neither injured man attended Thursday's sentencing, but the judge said: 'I am aware of the injuries suffered both physically and psychologically, of the effect it has had on their working lives."
The equipment used was standard in the industry, not just at London Heathrow but worldwide. New televators with guard rails are among the wave of improvements BA has made since the incidents, the court heard.
Earlier, Mr McGee had told the hearing: 'This case is about platforms being used to load and unload luggage on various sorts of aircraft and those pieces of equipment we say were not properly guarded in terms of edge protection and guards so that they prevented a risk of falls from height.'
He added: 'I think it is fair to say that the defendant company accepts it failed to take all reasonable steps to prevent a fall from height.'
James Leonard KC, for BA, told the court that both men have returned to work in different roles and the company has 'done everything they can to facilitate that and to make sure that relevant adjustments have been made'.
He said: 'We are not trying to derogate from the deep regret that anybody is injured. It should not happen and we should accept that accidents should be avoidable.'
He added: 'Accidents like this at Heathrow in general are the subject of discussion of stakeholders, so at least you will know there is learning in that regard.'
After the hearing, HSE enforcement lawyer Rebecca Schwartz said: 'Falls from height present a real risk of death or serious, life-changing injury. Both employees are fortunate to be alive today.
'The risks of working at height and the necessary control measures are well established – in these cases adequate guardrails would have significantly reduced the risk of harm.
'This was a reasonably foreseeable risk that British Airways should have been aware of and therefore it should have done more to protect its employees.'
Article continues below
A BA spokesman said: 'Safety is always our highest priority and we deeply regret that despite the measures we had in place, these incidents occurred. Having worked closely with the Health & Safety Executive, we had made changes to our procedures.'
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Times
11 hours ago
- Times
Rolls-Royce has wowed the City — can it charm airlines too?
With the temperature gauge nearing 40C, it was a typically stifling June day in downtown Delhi last Sunday. The temperature inside the air-conditioned Taj Mahal hotel was more amenable, but Sir Tim Clark was still getting hot under the collar. The British executive, who co-founded Emirates in 1985 and has led the airline since 2003, is known for lambasting aircraft engine manufacturers — and especially Rolls-Royce. Clark has refused to take delivery of multibillion-dollar order of Airbus aircraft until a fix can be found for what he has described as the 'defective' Rolls-Royce engines that power the specific type of planes. Is it frustrating, then, that Rolls's share price is at record highs? 'Just a bit,' he responded sardonically. • Rolls-Royce reinstates dividend and announces £1bn buyback To rub salt into the wound, Rolls's chief executive, Tufan Erginbilgic, cancelled a lunch date with him at the biennial Paris Air Show next week, the 75-year-old claimed during a fringe event as Delhi hosted the annual conference of airlines trade body IATA. This allegation was later hotly disputed by the Rolls camp. Clark is not alone among airline executives in directing his ire at the Derby-based engineering giant. Bosses at British Airways and Virgin Atlantic have been left fuming at chronic problems with Rolls engines that have grounded planes, leading to swathes of cancellations. The situation is worse still on the other side of the Atlantic. Issues with engines built by the Connecticut-based Pratt & Whitney led to a violent sell-off in Wizz Air shares last week. Bosses at the London-listed budget carrier were forced to issue a profit warning and remove forecasts amid concerns about contaminants in the powdered metal used to make its turbofan engines. Sentiment in the Square Mile towards Rolls-Royce, meanwhile, could hardly be more different. The company's shares have risen more than 800 per cent since Erginbilgic, a former BP executive, took office in January 2023. Five-year profit targets have been hit early, and investors have been showered with dividends and share buybacks. Rolls now boasts a stock market value of almost £75 billion, putting it among the five biggest companies in the FTSE 100 last week. The company's success has been built on the back of building and maintaining aircraft engines. Civil aerospace generates 51 per cent of Rolls's revenue and nearly two-thirds of its profits. So having won back the City, can it do the same with the airlines that ultimately keep it aloft? Rolls produces four main engine types: the clunkily named Trent XWB-84 and XWB-97, as well as the Trent 1000 and 7000. 'Yes, everybody who has Trent 1000s has the right to be very cross,' said Nick Cunningham, an analyst at the equity research firm Agency Partners. 'But the whole aero-engine industry is struggling with the latest generation of engines because they collectively ran up against the laws of physics — where the attempt to optimise fuel consumption, emissions and reliability ended up with them pushing the envelope too far.' The Trent 1000 is facing durability issues. 'The blades end up looking like someone with very bad teeth,' said Cunningham. 'We have been taking decisive action and moving quickly to prioritise the resources needed to reduce the impact created by the current industry wide supply chain constraints, it's the highest priority for our civil aerospace division,' Rolls said. The problem with the newer XWB — the -97 version of the engine that, so far, Emirates won't accept — is its propensity to be compromised in hot, sandy conditions such as those in the Middle East. The turbine blades are designed with tiny air-cooling holes. Inspections have found that these have become clogged up with glass, contained in sand blown into the engine, which melts and restricts airflow. A spokesman for Rolls said that Emirates had accepted the XWB-84 version of the engine on its A350-900 jets. The -97 will power A350-1000 aircraft. The interim response has been for Rolls to increase the number of engine inspections and replace parts more frequently. The company is working on a longer-term fix and could make an announcement as early as this month on progress. The increased number of inspections is one reason why BA and Virgin's jets are grounded more often. This has been compounded, across the aero-engine industry, by supply chain problems and labour issues. The roots of this can be traced back to the pandemic, which has led to planes being stuck in maintenance shops for longer. As a result, 15 per cent of the global fleet of aircraft is grounded, compared with the long-term average of 12 per cent, according to IATA. 'The single biggest challenge remains supply chain performance,' said Rob Watson, president of civil aerospace at Rolls. 'Things have improved, but there are still challenges. So that Covid impact is still washing through.' During the pandemic, engine manufacturers' complex network of suppliers had to stop production and furlough staff. Some of the suppliers failed. More recently, geopolitical events have affected access to raw materials. For example, titanium, a crucial metal in the production of engines, was almost exclusively sourced from Russia. 'We still see some fragility in our supply chain,' said Watson. 'So we've invested a lot in our forecasting capability, and we've now got an even better view of our supply chain's ability to order and deliver parts. 'We're doing a lot of work with our quality teams, making sure we've got the right quality in the supply chain and, in some cases, placing employees in supply chain organisations.' Cunningham at Agency Partners pointed out that labour shortages in maintenance workshops have put further strain on the ecosystem. 'All those old guys in the workshop that you used to see — the ones who, in the case of the American workshops, look like members of ZZ Top, and their equivalents in Europe — either got fired during Covid, or decided that it wasn't worth working the last few years of their career after being furloughed,' he said. This has left large parts of the sector with less experienced staff who are not as productive as their older predecessors. For BA, maintenance work on the Trent 1000 engines for its Boeing 787 Dreamliners means that the UK flag carrier has three to four planes grounded at any one time. Sources familiar with the situation said this will continue for the rest of 2025 at least. Such groundings put further pressure on other aircraft in BA's fleet — principally its older-generation Boeing 777 aircraft, which in turn require additional maintenance to compensate for extra flying hours. Sean Doyle, chief executive of British Airways, is thought to be waiting on Rolls to come up with a plan for 2026. BA this weekend declined to comment. • Everyone bashes it but BA is surging ahead … what's its secret? Virgin Atlantic said that aircraft availability continues to be 'slightly impacted' by the continued supply chain shortages related to Trent 1000 engines. 'We work very closely with Rolls-Royce to mitigate impact, and the reliability of our schedule is delivering strong results for our customers,' a spokeswoman said. British Airways recently gave the strongest sign yet that its patience with Rolls has run out in relation to the Trent 1000, however. BA's parent company, IAG, announced in May that an order of 32 Dreamliners would be powered by engines made by GE, Rolls's rival. Watson, Rolls-Royce's civil aerospace chief, said: 'Of course we were disappointed that IAG opted for GE on the recent Dreamliner order. But it's always our customers' choice. 'Let's not forget that at the same time the Dreamliner order didn't go our way, IAG placed a significant order of Rolls-Royce-powered Airbus aircraft [for BA's sister airlines Aer Lingus, Iberia and Level], which I think demonstrates the strong relationship we've built with IAG.' As for the Trent XWB-97 on which Clark at Emirates claims he is waiting, Erginbilgic has set aside £1 billion to find a long-term fix to legacy issues with it and other engines. 'Since he [Erginbilgic] took over from Warren East [as chief executive], he really has transformed that business,' said Clark. 'Maybe he's a little bit more confident about his engineering capabilities. But I haven't seen any 'we will give you the engine' or 'we will guarantee the engine'.' Maybe Clark will find out over their lunch later this month at the Paris Air Show. Assuming their date is still going ahead.
BBC News
2 days ago
- BBC News
Corby flour mill fined £300,000 after worker loses finger
The owner of a flour mill has been fined £300,000 after a maintenance worker's finger was severed by a incident happened at ADM Milling on the Earlstrees Industrial Estate in Corby, Northamptonshire, in investigation found the firm had failed to plan and risk assess the job firm pleaded guilty to one count of breaching the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 and was sentenced at Northampton Magistrates' Court on Wednesday. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE), which brought the prosecution, said the incident demonstrated that all maintenance tasks should be "carefully assessed".David Wood, who was 59 at the time, had been carrying out maintenance work on a packer closing HSE said: "The 800kg (126 stone) machine became unbalanced and tipped backwards, trapping his left hand."This resulted in the little finger on the hand being severed."The HSE found that the firm "failed to safely manage the risks of people performing maintenance at its factory".The health and safety legislation requires employers to make sure people working on their site who are not employed by them are not "exposed to risks to their health or safety".The firm was ordered to pay a total of £309,517.40 in fines and costs. An HSE spokesperson said: "HSE guidance states that maintenance work needs to be correctly planned and carried out."Unsafe maintenance has caused many fatalities and serious injuries, either during the work or as a result of using badly/wrongly maintained machines."The Workers' Union said: "Health and safety breaches can result in more than financial penalties - they can damage a company's reputation, lower workforce morale and change lives in an instant." Follow Northamptonshire news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
BreakingNews.ie
3 days ago
- BreakingNews.ie
Hospital apologises for shortcomings in care which led to death of woman and her unborn baby
Tipperary University Hospital has apologised to the family of a young mother for the shortcomings in care which led to her death and that of her unborn baby. Caroline Kavanagh was 22 weeks pregnant with her second child, a baby boy, when she first presented at the Clonmel hospital's emergency department with chest pain. Advertisement The family's counsel, Dr John O'Mahony SC, told the High Court the 37-year old woman was misdiagnosed and her heart attack symptoms were not identified or addressed and she was discharged home. Dr O'Mahony said it was a 'heartbreaking and extremely sad case' where the young mother five days later was found unresponsive in bed at her Kilmallock, Co Limerick, home and later pronounced dead. 'Her mother came to her home and found her daughter motionless in bed. Caroline had died and the baby she was carrying died with his mother,' Dr O'Mahony told the court. Outside the High Court, Caroline Kavanagh's family said it had been a ten year long battle for justice and even though they now had the long awaited apology from the HSE and hospital it will not bring back Caroline or the unborn baby boy who was to be known as TJ. Advertisement Dr O'Mahony, instructed by solicitor Ciaran O'Keeffe, said at the hospital there was a misdiagnosis and a mistaken belief that an elevated level of the protein Troponin in the blood was due to pregnancy when in reality it can point to cardiovascular issues. The letter of apology was read to the court as Caroline's 74-year-old mother, Margaret Kavanagh, of Cashel, Co Tipperary, settled a High Court action against the HSE over her daughter's death on February 11th, 2015. The letter from the interim hospital manager, Ailish Delaney, expressed 'profound sympathy and condolences' to Mrs Kavanagh on the loss of Caroline and her unborn child. It added: 'The management and staff of the hospital apologise sincerely for the shortcomings in the care which was provided to Caroline and which led to her tragic death. The hospital wishes to acknowledge the heartache and distress suffered by her family because of her premature passing and to express our sincere sympathy and regret.' Advertisement A breach of duty was admitted by the HSE in the case. At the time of her death, Ms Kavanagh's daughter, Megan, was only nine months old. Outside court, Margaret Kavanagh said it had taken the family 10 years to get justice for Caroline. 'While we acknowledge the apology from the HSE, as a family we believe that if the past mistakes that were made had had been corrected we would not be here today.' Advertisement She said even though the family now has the apology, it will not bring back Caroline or the unborn baby who was going to be called Thomas James or TJ. She said Caroline had been so looking forward to the birth of her second child. 'She was a great mother, daughter, sister and just a great person,' she said. Clutching a picture of her daughter she wears in a pendant around her neck, Mrs Kavanagh said while the family had now got justice, it had taken so long. Advertisement 'Why are there all these mistakes? We are in the 21st Century and we seem to be going backwards,' she said. Mrs Kavanagh, who was accompanied to court by Caroline's sister Claire, said she hoped that no family in the future will have to go through 'the pain and loss we have experienced in the last 10 years.' World Nine hurt as turbulence forces Ryanair plane into... Read More In the proceedings, it was claimed that the correct diagnosis of acute heart attack was not made and Caroline Kavanagh was not offered appropriate cardiac care to significantly improve her chances of survival when she attended the hospital on February 6th, 2015. She ultimately died of the complications of heart attack on February 11th, 2015. It was claimed substandard care had been provided to Ms Kavanagh and she did not have an echocardiogram. She had been started on cardioprotective medication on admission to hospital but these were stopped on discharge. Noting the settlement and the division of the statutory €35,000 mental distress payment, Mr Justice Paul Coffey extended his deepest sympathy to the Kavanagh family.
