From a Corporate Health and Safety perspective this makes all the sense in the world - there is material risk of injury when you lift things over your head - especially with an aging workforce. Imagine repeating this thousands of times a day across all the flights in the system and you just know back injuries are going to happen. For better or worse, WCB/WSIB count those against the airline if the employee has the injury but not the customer.

Of course from a customer service perspective, completely different story.