Attendants want temps regulated
One of the scariest examples of an overheated airliner came in June 2017, when a woman and her beet-red, 4month-old baby needed ice bags and then an ambulance because of the heat of a flight in Denver. The child recovered with treatment.
But flight attendants’ unions assembled dozens of other anecdotes of planes too hot or too cold for comfort.
With those, the group is urging the Transportation Department to begin regulating the temperature aboard airliners. The union’s anecdotes included stories of flight attendants and passengers occasionally passing out or becoming ill aboard hot planes.
“Today there are no standards that exist for aircraft temperatures, for the passengers or the crews that are working those flights,” Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, which represents 50,000 workers at 20 airlines, told reporters Wednesday in Washington.
“This is an issue of safety, health and security. If it’s too hot, people can become dizzy, unaware, suffer from heat stroke. If it’s too cold, they can experience cold stress or even hypothermia.”
The department received the petition and is considering it.
The industry group Airlines for America, which represents most of the largest carriers, said regulations are unnecessary because flight attendants work with pilots to adjust each cabin’s temperature case by case with the maintenance teams at each airline.
“The safety and well-being of our passengers and crew is the industry’s No. 1 priority,” said Alison McAfee, a spokeswoman for the airline group. “U.S. airlines work hard to maintain a level of comfort passengers expect on each and every flight, including the temperature of the cabin.”
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