Analysis of Baggage Handling in Airplane Cargo Hold of Commercial Airplane: A Case Study in Ergonomics

Ergonomic studies related to commercial aviation have focused on improvements related to drivers’ commands and cockpit. However, a small number of studies are devoted to the ground manual transport related to the airplane cargo hold. This study aimed to analyze the biomechanical overload in manual load lifting tasks among ramp operators of commercial airplanes through the application of NIOSH and RULA methods. Two cases involving luggage loading and unloading activities were observed. Data collection was performed with a ramp operator, which photos and filming of activities and workplace during passenger boarding and disembarking of passengers. The biomechanical factors observed and analyzed in this study, with the application of NIOSH and RULA methods, allowed generating values that indicated that luggage loading and unloading activities bring high biomechanical risk for both the manual load lifting activity and for the postures used during luggage handling, which may cause health problems to ramp operators.