Commercial Fixed Wing
Flight Attendant Current
Communication Breakdown; Workload; Training / Qualification
Aircraft Equipment Problem Less Severe; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural MEL / CDL; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Maintenance; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy; Flight Deck / Cabin / Aircraft Event Illness / Injury
General Physical Injury / Incapacitation
Company Policy; Human Factors; Procedure; Aircraft
Aircraft X has had several Business seats inop electrically. Customer Service put customers in the seats with expectations that crew will manually deploy and move seats to the desired recline and bring them back up. It's one thing to have to manually adjust seats when they become inoperative in flight BUT when an aircraft leaves with known broken seats it is a lot to expect the crew to get on their hands and knees to adjust seats. Today several female crew refused to move the seats due to previous injury- bruises; cuts and sore muscles. As the make and purser it was left up to me- after this trip I have a painful neck and right shoulder from adjusting the seats manually.Company is asking for OJI's with this continued practice. How about fixing the seats?
Seats 10K/L in business class blocked because there is no electrical function; including no reading light or call button. Gate [personnel] and I had it all organized. Someone away from gate unblocked 10K and sold an upgrade to a coach passenger. Pax walks on a bit intoxicated and says that he can do his seat manually- I tell him no for safety reasons. You have to understand these seats - to reset you get on floor; under foot rest; release buttons and entire 50+ pound seat flies down- very unsafe. They felt seat was not 'inop enough' to placard it. They expected FAs (Flight Attendants) to lower and raise seat multiple times for pax. This is an unsafe condition. I have an OJI past from this! Pushing sideways to raise a 50 lb seat is not a safe thing to do. I am reporting that a broken seat should never be sold intentionally with the intent of crew operating it manually. We do that if it happens en-route at some risk to our backs; neck and shoulders. Never should it be offered as a routine service. This is specifically about the former business first seats.  You have to do it to understand what I am trying to convey.
Flight Attendants report injuries resulted from manually adjusting seats in business class in flight.