3 Flight Crew Risks that We Don’t See

Airfreight workers, plane cabin crews as well as pilots, and other airborne professionals are at risk. They are dying as we speak. Every day, worldwide, someone up in the sky is risking their life to deliver air freight services in the Philippines or make you understand how to use the emergency floatation device in case the plane accidentally makes an emergency landing.

We’re not talking about the emergency landing per se because even the risk of aircraft accidents has significantly plummeted (pun intended) in the last year. No, we are actually talking about health risks like

The Cosmos is trying to Kill Flight Workers

Air freight in the Philippines is becoming a viable option both as a business venture and a career path but flight crews are at a greater risk of getting cancer and other cell-related illnesses just from being in the skies for too long.

That’s because they are constantly being exposed to cosmic radiations. For people just transiting, there’s only so little radiation that they are exposed to and that’s OK but for the others who fly for a living, that “little” radiation builds up over time into cancer, impotence, and even incapacity to bear offspring. Constant exposure even merits that a flight crew be treated as a radiation worker as well.

Females deal with Mental Health Issues

Although this factor may be more incidental and less associative, mental illness is a serious issue that can potentially take lives especially of flight attendants and more specifically of the females. Although there is alarmingly little literature on the subject, the objectification of women takes a mile-high toll for flight attendants so much that it causes anxiety, depression, and suicide.

To add to that, constant pressure from the work environment isn’t helping the situation at all, with 48% of flight crew regarding their health as fair or failing.

Men Deal with Sex Issues

And we don’t mean just becoming impotent as pointed out in the first item—apart from having a high rate of suicide and alcohol-related death, there is an alarming trend of male flight attendants dying because of HIV-related illnesses. What is more concerning is that flight, in the same way, that some countries are more keen to people living with HIV, some airlines also restrict employment if an applicant has the virus, presumably because they could potentially spread it elsewhere. As to why HIV has begun to eat away at male flight attendants is still a mystery.

There are more things to air related work than what meets the normal person’s fancy; some of the biggest risks that people in the industry take do not include planes falling from the sky. If you know someone who is a flight attendant or is constantly flying because they are part of an air freight provider in the Philippines, US, or other parts of the world, it might be best to tell them the risks that they might be overlooking.