A cargo handler at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey was towing a metal airplane tail stand—a metal frame used to support the tail of an aircraft when it is being loaded and unloaded—when the tail stand’s central stabilizer, or support, caught on the raised lip of a manhole cover, destabilizing it. The stabilizer had been left down by mistake; when a tail stand is being moved, the stabilizer should be raised.
The tail stand was damaged by the error, and the worker took it out of service. Neither he nor the other two cargo handlers working with him that night thought anything more of the incident.
Just an hour later, another cargo handler, 40-year-old Timothy Gallagher, was towing a different tail stand up the same ramp and encountered the same problem—the tail stand’s central stabilizer had been left dragging the ground and caught on the same five-eighths of an inch raised manhole cover. This time, though, the impact tipped the tail stand forward. The 1,750-pound tail stand landed on Gallagher’s head and shoulders, pinning him to the cargo tug he was driving and causing fatal injuries.
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Simple Steps to Safety
NIOSH investigated this incident as part of its Fatality Assessment and Control Evaluation (FACE) program and determined that the worker’s death was preventable. According to NIOSH’s findings, the worker’s life could have been saved by:
- Commonly available safety equipment. The cargo tug that Gallagher was driving was not equipped with a protective safety cage. If it had been, the falling tail stand would have been deflected, likely saving Gallagher’s life. Because airline cargo handlers commonly face falling object hazards, cargo tugs equipped with safety cages are readily available. In fact, another cargo handling company at the same airport used tugs equipped with safety cages.
- Training. As NIOSH noted, federal OSHA found in a separate investigation that the employer’s safety training “was not comprehensive or cohesive, and employee awareness of safety was limited.” In addition, employees were permitted to handle and use equipment that they were unfamiliar with. In this case, the manufacturer’s instructions clearly indicated that the central stabilizer must be raised before moving the stand to prevent it from catching on uneven or protruding surfaces, and that its upper support must be fully lowered before moving the tail stand to reduce tipping hazards. Lacking appropriate training, employees did not realize that catching the tail stand’s central stabilizer on the ground did more than cause minor damage to the tail stand—it also created a potentially deadly hazard.
- Safety interlock devices. Another simple engineering solution to this hazard would be to equip the tail stand with a safety interlock device that would prevent it from being moved while the central support stabilizer and the upper support were in extended positions. This device would have forced the cargo handlers to render the tail stand safe to move, preventing the types of carelessness and shortcuts that led to this accident.
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Improving Hazard Recognition
Simple engineering controls or training could have saved Gallagher’s life, so why weren’t such controls in place or training conducted?
Apparently the underlying problem was that no one recognized how serious the hazard was. Tail stand tipovers are a recognized hazard—the manufacturer’s instructions discussed the risk and how to control it—but none of the cargo handlers at the airport had actually witnessed a tail stand tip-over, and the workers and their employer didn’t recognize the conditions that could lead to a tipover.
Two of NIOSH’s recommendations encouraged this employer and other employers to improve their ability to recognize the presence of a potentially deadly hazard before an accident, and take corrective action. NIOSH suggested that employers:
- Review maintenance records. Repairing the tail stand’s central support after it had caught on the ground was apparently a common occurrence, but no one asked why such incidents were happening over and over, or what problems they might lead to beyond damage to the tail stand. If nothing else, equipment that is repeatedly damaged may become inherently unsafe. NIOSH recommended that employers carefully track maintenance records and regard repeat incidents as red flags
- Evaluate near misses quickly. A near miss is a chance to correct a problem before someone gets hurt—but only for employers that act quickly. Just an hour before Gallagher was killed, an incident like the one that killed him had occurred, but no one had given it much thought. That’s a dangerous mindset.
It should also be noted that the tight schedule that employees were working under contributed to this incident. Allowing employees sufficient time to do their jobs is a critical safety practice that is often overlooked.