Injury prevention: Focus on ergonomics
United Airlines’ ergonomic program is a comprehensive approach to maintaining a safe and healthy work environment. Our ergonomic goals cover the essential aspects of a successful ergonomic strategy. By focusing on injury prevention, employee well-being and compliance with regulations, United Airlines demonstrates a strong commitment to its team members’ health and safety. This holistic approach not only benefits employees but also contributes to the overall success of the company through enhanced productivity and subsequent cost reduction.
What we are doing
- Hired a dedicated full-time ergonomist to engage with our safety teams to design programs that optimize the well-being of team members and minimize injuries from work-related tasks.
- Requiring front-line team members to take a training course that helps them to understand how body positioning can improve balance and power that ultimately reduces their risk of injury and provided specific best practices for high-risk tasks within each division.
- Providing guidance and ergonomic design parameters to operations teams to help ensure ergonomic principles are infused into the planning phase of new projects and injury prevention initiatives.
- Seeking technology to minimize injuries from work-related tasks.
Injury prevention: Heat-related
What we are doing
United is committed to ensuring a safe and healthy environment for employees and customers through programs and processes that prevent heat-related injuries. We have implemented a comprehensive Heat Illness Prevention Plan that aims to mitigate the risk of heat-related illnesses by educating employees on prevention methods and actions to take if symptoms arise. Leaders monitor employees’ well-being and ensure that they are provided access to water, shade and guidance on taking adequate breaks. We are also testing new technology solutions for heat illness prevention.
Heat management is also a focus on board our aircraft. When an aircraft arrives at a gate, ground crews connect ground power units and preconditioned air units to ensure a comfortable cabin temperature. Our pilots and flight attendants gauge if cabins are at a safe temperature and work with station operation teams to remedy any issues.
Emergency process: Improved in-flight medical event response
In late 2024, we launched a more streamlined in-flight medical emergency process. Our teams worked cross-functionally to improve the overall process with use of new technology that greatly improves communication, increases timeliness and ultimately enables better and faster medical decisions that elevates safety for our customers and crew.
With this new process, our Flight Attendants are able to directly contact medical personnel while in flight. This process is conducted through a third-party service agreement.