British Airways passengers say they are being subjected to health and safety madness after the airline banned them from walking down a set of stairs and instead forced them to use escalators at its hub at Heathrow Airport’s Terminal 5.
The new safety measures were reportedly introduced after a rash of recent incidents involving passengers tumbling down stairs with their hand luggage as they rushed to be the first on the plane.
One passenger who was recently stopped by a gate agent from using the stairs was left bemused by the policy, taking to the frequent flyer forum Flyer Talk to share their experience.
“Seems a bit far-fetched that 20 years after the terminal opens, all of a sudden people are regularly getting maimed and falling to their deaths on the stairs,” the passenger wrote.
“BUT only the stairs at boarding gates,” the passenger continued. “All other staircases are fine. I know this as I defied death earlier today, coming down the stairs into the baggage hall.”
The passenger pondered whether this was just an isolated incident, but other frequent flyers quickly chimed in to share that they had experienced the policy in the last few days.
The silliness of the policy was not lost on other commentators, who quite rightly pointed out that British Airways uses a large number of ‘remote’ parking stands without airbridges, thereby forcing passengers to use mobile airstairs to board and deplane.
Others, however, suggested that the policy was restricted to BA’s main terminal gates, where passengers have to descend a level to access the airbridge because of the airline’s generous hand luggage allowance.
The issue, they argued, is that some passengers are keen to get ahead of the pack so as to get on the plane ahead of them and find space in the overhead lockers for their hand luggage, so they have taken to racing down the stairs rather than using the escalators.
It’s that race to board the plane while there’s still space in the overhead lockers that could be behind the reported increase in trips and falls.
“It’s clearly got nothing to do with the safety (or otherwise) of the fixed staircase and everything to do with preventing the stampede of absolute muppets who try and race down the fixed staircase to effectively queue-jump,” one commentator blasted.
According to the UK’s Office of National Statistics, 1,035 people died after falling down stairs in 2023, which is the most recent year for which figures are available. That’s a sharp rise from 2022, when 851 died for the same reason.
As you might expect, the number of deaths due to falling down stairs fell during the COVID-19 pandemic, but the death rate from falling down stairs is much higher than pre-pandemic, with just 748 dying from a fall on stairs in 2019.
If an accident resulting in injury occurs on an international flight, then passengers can attempt to claim compensation under the Montreal Convention. In the past, the courts have determined that the process of boarding and deplaning is also within scope.
However, airlines do not have to pay compensation if they can show that the accident was the result of the passenger’s own negligence or caused by another customer.
