Saturday, January 15, 2022

TRULY ACCESSIBLE AIR TRAVEL

COULD BE COMING SOONER THAN YOU THINK

The headline contains the good/hopeful news.

But first the bad.

For more than half a century, my wife and all others who use a wheelchair for mobility, have to check their legs at the door and worry during an entire flight.

The very real possibility is an essential power or manual wheelchair will be broken beyond repair, lost or damaged so much that the trip is ruined.

Every time I get an online form thanking me for using an air carrier, I move to the “other” comments and submit something like this:

Please build a plane that allows wheelchair users to board in their power wheelchairs.

My wife is a wheelchair user.

She cannot fly with a power chair -- because the airlines are very well known (tragically) for badly damaging, even losing wheelchairs.

Flying without your wheelchair is like flying without your legs attached.

Technology exists to allow a person to roll aboard and be safely secured for flying.

Forcing people to stow their means of mobility out of sight and out of use is: humiliating, terrifying -- something that strips dignity and perpetuates discrimination.

Please address this.

If you do not, anything American Airlines states about commitment to equity, inclusion and diversity -- rings 100 percent hollow.

Now the somewhat good news, light at the end of the tunnel story:

https://www.travelpulse.com/news/airlines/truly-accessible-air-travel-could-be-coming-sooner-than-you-think.html


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