Sleeping In Airports

FIFO looking like tired idea

THEY’RE on six-figure salaries and there’s no doubt a soft pillow and warm bed waiting at home, but one FIFO and his mate were doing it tough this week waiting for their flights.

Catching some shut-eye on cold, hard concrete in the Emerald Airport carpark, the dog-tired men were power-napping, prone on a pathway and bench.

Queensland Mining Communities president Kelly Vea Vea said she wasn’t shocked by the sight which she said was becoming more common at regional airports linked to the mines.

“Well, I suppose I’m not surprised because these companies are forcing people into these FIFO and drive in, drive out conditions without mitigating against the issue of fatigue management,” she told Central Queensland News.

Central Queensland University chronobiology and sleep Associate Professor Dr Naomi Rogers said the resource industry needed to adopt a standard fatigue management plan in place of the existing guidelines.

While she conceded the guidelines were “a good start”, Dr Rogers urged mining companies to adopt a standardised plan to minimise potential harm and fatalities as a result of long working hours.

“When a worker checks out of their room at the camp for their final shift before they go home, they immediately lose that room when someone else checks in so they don’t have the chance to rest before they drive the seven or eight hours home to their families,” Dr Rogers said.

“The accommodation shortage has a direct link to worker fatigue, and as a result, they are sleeping in cars, on the side of the road, or wherever they can.”

Dr Rogers referred to the coronial inquest into the deaths of Norwich Park and Blackwater mine workers as the first real investigation into the dangers of fatigue.

Although it was a good start, she hoped the study findings to be presented at the Queensland Mining Health and Safety conference in Townsville later this year would contribute toward fatigue management reform at mine sites.

The preliminary findings of the study to be presented at the conference were suggested to an unnamed Bowen Basin mining company management, who rejected the recommendations, prompting the CFMEU to withdraw its support of the policy.

CFMEU Industry Safety and Health representative Chris Gilbert said the demands put on workers to meet increased production levels amid the resource boom put lives at risk and were not addressed in the policy.

Drunk passenger relieves himself in the airplane aisle | Sleeping ...

Gross!

A drunk New Zealand airline passenger relieved himself in an airplane aisle, splashing other passengers in the process, was let off with just a warning about his behaviour.

The man was travelling on a Jetstar flight from Auckland to Singapore on Monday when he urinated in the aisle about six hours into the 11-hour trip, the New Zealand Herald reported.

Passenger Amos Chapple said he heard the sound of running water and other passengers remonstrating with the man before seeing the offender answering a call of nature “waving back and forth”.

The man and a companion were “catatonic” after drinking whisky before take-off, Chapple told the newspaper.

He said the man soaked a male passenger’s leg and a woman’s scarf then “slowly became aware that he was being uncouth. He pulled up… and wobbled back to the other end of the plane.”

Chapple said flight attendants warned the man about his behaviour he but criticized Jetstar for not taking sterner action.

The New Zealand Herald said Jetstar confirmed there was inappropriate behaviour from a drunk passenger but maintained there was no need to involve police after the man was warned and had his alcohol confiscated.

“We issued our final warning… if you don’t behave after the warning, then it becomes a matter for federal police,” it quoted an airline spokeswoman as saying.

The Complete Travel Detective Bible, The Consummate Insider Tells You What You Need to Know in an Increasingly Complex World!

The Traveler's Diet, Eating Right and Staying Fit on the Road

A traveler's guide to sleeping in airports

Ask Arthur Frommer, And Travel Better, Cheaper, Smarter

Rick Steves' Europe Through the Back Door 2011, The Travel Skills Handbook