KTLA

LAX workers say they lacked training and gloves to clean planes from China

Airline passengers on a recent flight.(Jerome Adamstein / Los Angeles Times)

Terrified about the coronavirus outbreak, airline worker Barbara Gomez refused her supervisor’s order to clean the interior of an American Airlines plane when it arrived from China at Los Angeles International Airport.

Gomez, a cabin attendant for JetStream Ground Services, said she was given no gloves or a mask before being told to help wipe down the interior of the plane.


“Everybody is concerned about the virus,” she said of the incident in late January. “We don’t have anything to protect us.”

With the outbreak claiming more than 3,000 lives around the globe, the risk of being infected is on everybody’s mind, especially airline and airport workers like Gomez and her colleagues, who say they have been forced to choose between their jobs and possibly being exposed to the virus.

Read the full story on LATimes.com.