Training / Qualification; Situational Awareness; Time Pressure; Communication Breakdown
Aircraft Equipment Problem Less Severe; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy; Flight Deck / Cabin / Aircraft Event Other / Unknown; Ground Event / Encounter Other / Unknown
General Flight Cancelled / Delayed
Company Policy; Human Factors; Manuals; Procedure; Aircraft
A Ramp Agent brought an electric chair to the 2R door and wanted me to open the door so they could load it onto a catering truck. I explained to him that we do not open the doors from the inside but the caterer could open it from the outside. An Agent Supervisor (a woman in street clothes) came down and insisted that I open the door and I explained again that we do not open doors from the inside. She said that she was calling Inflight [Services].She called me out to the jetway phone and said that when it rang again it would be an Inflight Supervisor. When I answered the Supervisor never asked me what was going on or what the problem was; simply started quoting manual chapters to me. I told her that it is hammered into us all year that we do not open the doors from the inside. She said that I had to open the door. When I objected she said 'SWEETIE I am an Inflight Supervisor.' I then had another Flight Attendant confirm the door was disarmed and I opened it. I was forced to open a door with a large wheelchair sitting in front of the door and leaning out a four story open door with a straight drop to concrete. After I opened the door they discovered that the lift would not even come close to the door opening. Now I was forced to lean out the four story drop again to close the door that should never have been opened. So I had placed myself in danger for nothing.They then did what they should have done in the first place before causing a thirty minute delay and found a way to get it out via the jetway. Our Inflight Manual; section XXXXX says; 'flight attendants are NEVER to open an aircraft door from the inside...that; if there is a problem; they should contact an agent or Maintenance'. If the Inflight Supervisor had asked questions she would have [learned] how dangerous her demands were. If I had bumped the wheelchair in the opening and lost my balance or slipped while reaching outside the aircraft I would have dropped out of the four story opening onto the concrete below and there would have been a dead flight attendant on the tarmac.The Agent Supervisor would not listen to my safety concerns or to other options. The Inflight Supervisor was never interested in knowing what was going on from our safety perspective on the aircraft and never asked any questions about what was happening on the aircraft. They both forced us into putting our own safety in jeopardy for something that was never going to work in the first place. After the flight the woman that owned the chair came and talked to me. When I told her that the Ramp Agent told me that the battery was dead she said that if they had come and asked her she could have told them that [the battery cables] just come loose and she could have come and reconnected it. She was very upset about our treatment of her and her chair. All this happened because both supervisors were not interested in getting all the information before they made decisions and neither gave one moment's concern for the safety of the crew.
An acrimonious exchange resulted when supervisors from passenger boarding and Inflight Service Departments demanded that a Flight Attendant (the reporter) open the A330's 2R cabin level passenger service door from inside the aircraft in direct violation of the company's Flight Attendant's Operations Manual forbidding doing so; the intended reason being to remove a passenger's electric wheel chair from the aircraft to a catering truck and thence to be boarded in cargo. After compelling the Attendant to do so they discovered the lift vehicle intended to remove the chair was unable to access the door opening.