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Time and force required for attendants boarding wheelchair users onto aircraft

Holloway, CSM; Thoreau, R; Petit, E; (2015) Time and force required for attendants boarding wheelchair users onto aircraft. International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics , 48 pp. 167-173. 10.1016/j.ergon.2015.04.003.. Green open access

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Abstract

Ensuring equal opportunity to all transport modes, including air travel, allows disabled people the same freedom of travel available to the rest of the population. However, boarding of wheelchair users onto airplanes is physically demanding for attendant airline or airport personal whom assist and time consuming and costly for airlines. This paper presents a comparison between two methods of boarding wheelchair users, measuring the forces required and the duration taken. Participants were asked to act as attendants and to board weighted wheelchairs onto simulated aircraft vestibules using two different manoeuvre methods (“going forwards” and “going backwards”), with two different loadings (“light” and “heavy”) in two different access scenarios (“level access” and “sloped access”) between the jet-way/scissor-lift and the aircraft. The results reveal that the “going backwards” technique is a slightly faster manoeuvre method but no difference in the forces required exist between the two methods. The weight of the wheelchair affected the forces required to complete the boarding and exceeded health and safety guidelines for attendants. Reducing the height of the step between the aircraft and the jet-way or scissor-lift is recommended. Relevance to Industry: The research highlights the juxtaposition between the need to board wheelchair users and the excessive force required by the attendants propelling the wheelchair.

Type: Article
Title: Time and force required for attendants boarding wheelchair users onto aircraft
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1016/j.ergon.2015.04.003.
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ergon.2015.04.003.
Language: English
Additional information: © Elsevier 2015. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. Access may be initially be restricted by the publisher.
Keywords: Wheelchair; Accessibility; Disability; Aircraft boarding; Attendant propelled wheelchairs
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Civil, Environ and Geomatic Eng
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Computer Science
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1455270
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