Excessive warmth is inflicting canned carbonated drinks to blow up whereas being opened by flight attendants on some Southwest Airways flights, in accordance with airline officers.
“We’re conscious of the problem and have been taking steps to maintain onboard drinks cooler, particularly in our airports experiencing excessive temperatures,” mentioned Chris Perry, spokesman for Southwest Airways. “It’s a cross-functional effort between our airport groups and people within the air.”
The incidents have principally occurred on flights out of airports in Phoenix and Las Vegas, which have been gripped by brutal warmth waves, with triple digit temperatures forecast for this week. Different cities embrace Austin, Houston, Dallas and Sacramento.
The airline didn’t know what number of incidents have been reported up to now or what number of staff have been harm by the exploding cans.
“However one incident is already too many,” Perry mentioned. “That’s why we’re addressing it.”
He mentioned no passengers have been harm.
CBS Information, which reported the story first, mentioned about 20 flight attendants had been injured by the rupturing cans, together with one who wanted stitches.
Perry mentioned a part of the issue may need to do with the best way Southwest shops and hundreds drinks on planes. In contrast to different airways, he mentioned, Southwest doesn’t inventory perishables on board and infrequently makes use of air-conditioned catering vans.
In an effort to deal with the exploding cans downside, he mentioned, the airline carried out a collection of procedures that embrace utilizing coolers and directing floor crews to return carbonated can drinks with a temperature of 98 levels or extra again to the warehouse to chill down. Flight attendants have additionally been requested to not open cans that seem deformed.
“We’re additionally testing using some air-conditioned vans in Phoenix and Las Vegas,” he mentioned. “The 2 markets have basically excessive temperatures and are two of our largest operations.”
The measures had been just like these listed in an inside electronic mail to staff that CBS Information obtained.
Within the July 12 electronic mail, titled “Sizzling & Bursting Cans: Provisioning Procedural Adjustments,” firm officers mentioned discovering options to the “bursting scorching cans” was a high precedence and listed a collection of modifications the corporate was implementing corresponding to limiting the period of time the cans spend within the warmth and stocking fewer cans on provisioning vans.
Perry mentioned the modifications seemed to be serving to up to now, as there have been fewer incidents.
