B767 Undifferentiated or Other Model
Flight Attendant Current
Aircraft Equipment Problem Less Severe; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural FAR
General None Reported / Taken
Aircraft; Company Policy; Human Factors
I and other flight attendants have been drawing attention to the various problems inherent in this galley configuration which force us to violate FARs ourselves or are violations in and of themselves since we've received this reconfigured aircraft. In this third year of working this B767; still nothing has been done to rectify the blatant violations and other unsafe working conditions that this configuration and service causes. I feel that nobody is listening or cares about our safety concerns. Actually; it has gotten worse; in that staffing has been reduced by 1 flight attendant [in a premium cabin]; so we are forced to cut more corners in order to accomplish the main service in under 4-5 hours. 1) The half carts with glasses and trash bins do not fit in their housing unless the aft cart restraint is not deployed. According to flight attendant regulations; which are posted on the placard just aft of flight deck; 'all restraints must be deployed for taxi; takeoff; landing and turbulence.' Again; if aft restraint is deployed; forward cart does not fit into housing. It protrudes past housing about ¾ inch making forward restraint impossible to deploy. This is just bad design and a blatant violation.2) There is very limited space in the galley; so aisle flight attendants must pull out 5 carts; 1 beverage; and 2 trash/glass carts that are parked in front of 1L and 1R jumpseats. This comes from both the official handout that Management gave to flight attendants in order to learn how to do the service when we first received this aircraft after reconfiguration. It is also what the training flight attendants told us to do when they accompanied crews the first few months of these trips. The training flight attendants were trained by Management on how to train the rest of the flight attendant population. This unsafe practice blocks our jumpseats for the length of the service; which can take up to 4-5 hours. On this flight; it took us 4.5 hours total. This is far too long to block flight attendant jumpseats for the convenience of having a workspace. In fact; the Captain directed us to sit down immediately for turbulence 2 separate times in the first 2 hours of the flight. It took at least 5 minutes to move all the carts out of the way--the 4 glass/trash carts; beverage cart and 3 tier carts that galley flight attendant was in the process of setting up. If turbulence had been worse; we could've gotten injured as it took too long to move all those unsecured carts away from our jumpseats. 3) Service is still expected to be accomplished by putting separate food items; i.e. cutlery/butter plate/condiments; appetizers and salads on separate carts and served one at a time. This takes a long time and contributes to the length of time we must block our jumpseats. 4) There are no stepstools for use in obtaining needed items from the back row of carrier boxes. In order to get things from there; my copy of galley tips directs us to 'stand on an empty carrier box to reach the one behind it on the high locations' (above coffee makers; aft side of galley). In fact; there would be no other way to get these items out as the location is much too high and front carriers have heavy items such as silver coffee pots in them. There are NO stepstools onboard this aircraft. 5) Had to leave garbage cart open; with bin and trash exposed to air for entire flight. This is another FAR regulation that we cannot help violate in order to do our jobs efficiently. All of the galleys have trash bins with a snap lid or hinged lid that is easy to close when not in use. There is no need to ever move a trash cart out of the housing in a galley. There is no need to pull out inner bin that actually holds trash either. However; on some galleys; such as this B767 reconfigure; (and also the 737 galleys) there is no cutout on the galley counter to easily put trash into it. Perhaps because the counter space is so limited; I'm not sure. The end result is that; in order to adhere to FAR (and common sense safety parameters which are necessary to prevent an onboard fire); it is literally a 12 step process to take out the bin; use it and put it back so that trash contents are not exposed to the open air: 1-move cart restraint 2-move other cart restraint 3-unlock foot brake 4-pull cart out 5-fold door back 6-pull out inner bin 7-put trash in 8-replace bin 9-close door 10-push cart back into housing (it cannot remain out of housing during flight as it would be unrestrained and actually; cart brakes don't work very well on some carts and slip constantly) 11-set brake 12-replace cart restraints. For obvious reasons; flight attendants cannot do this every time they need to use the trash; therefore we fold the door back and leave inner bin pulled out (with cart restraints only holding the cart itself) so that we can easily access the trash. This is unsafe for 2 reasons: the danger of an open fire inflight (which I assume is why there is an FAR directing the trash to always be covered) and the risk of the inner bin or its contents (including empty wine bottles) sliding out and becoming projectiles during turbulence. But we have no other alternative or we'd spend the entire flight pulling out and putting back the trash cart.
B767 Flight Attendant laments the reconfigured galley design of some of her company's aircraft and believes that FARs are being violated in order to work efficiently.