Tekken 4 touch and go airport3/19/2024 Frank Gardner or Sophie Morgan), they rarely make the mainstream media.īut the pandemic has shown us that air travel can change: from PCR tests to a ‘traffic light’ system to flexible tickets, airlines and airports have had to quickly adapt to protect the health of all of us. ![]() Unless these incidents happen to someone high-profile (eg. The same study reported wheelchair users suffering injuries and having bad experiences during transfers, with 60% of respondents having had their wheelchairs damaged during travel. ’īut the problem doesn’t stop at broken wheelchairs and snail-paced ‘special assistance’.Ī 2021 study by AbleMove found that 62% of disabled passengers restrict their food or fluids before a flight because airplane toilets aren’t accessible. ‘This is the only way I can live my life. In the US a few months earlier, a viral TikTok showed a disabled passenger in distress after her wheelchair was broken by the airline. Last month, an Irish swimmer tweeted that his wheelchair was ‘destroyed’ by the airline on his way to Tokyo for the Paralympic Games. They happen to disabled travellers all the time. There was no explanation, and certainly no compensation.īut these experiences are not mine alone. The airport blamed the airline and the airline blamed the airport. Once we got home, we complained - but the short apologetic email did little to alleviate the harm that was caused. Some of the group were crying, others had missed their connecting flights and all of us needed the loo. It was almost two hours before we were picked up. I phoned my family and they tried to find me, but none of us could work out what room I was in, and the airport staff were no help in trying to reunite us. The only exit was a towering staircase, which clearly, none of us could climb. An attendant told us that someone would come and pick us up then she left, locking the doors behind her. We were isolated from our friends and families but assured that we would soon be reunited.Īfter a long wait on the plane, we were made to board a small van and were driven to a room just off the tarmac. We had landed after a return flight from Madeira when the flight attendants announced that all passengers requiring special assistance would be driven to Passport Control in a separate buggy. ![]() I sat on my wheelie bag and my friend fanned me when I almost fainted.īut my worst travel experience happened in 2018 this time, on home ground. But since I didn’t ‘look disabled’, I worried that if I spoke up and asked for help, I wouldn’t be believed I still had the memory of that rude special assistance attendant at the back of my mind. The queue for passports took over an hour, and the room - in the heat of an Italian summer - was boiling. I was with my friends and it was our first holiday as a group, and I didn’t want to slow us down or throw up a fuss – so I accepted it, and decided to try to get through security on my own. I felt ashamed, like I was somehow guilty, and I worried that maybe I would never be believed, because my illness was invisible. I told him simply that ‘I had an illness that makes it hard for me to walk’, to which he replied that I was ‘too young’ and looked ‘too well’ to need a wheelchair. At the time, I still didn’t have a diagnosis, so this wasn’t an easy question for me to answer. I was met by a special assistance attendant who wore a permanent smirk and kept asking me why I needed the wheelchair. It was when we landed that I faced my second barrier this one attitudinal. They wheeled me like this through the airport to the special assistance desk where I was given a real wheelchair, pushed through security, and given priority to board the plane. ![]() My brothers suggested that I sit on the luggage trolley like it was a makeshift wheelchair. Somehow, I would have to get there on foot. But on arrival, I was met with my first obstacle: the special assistance desk was located not at the entrance, but deep into Departures. We’d taken a taxi to the terminal, so I hadn’t had to move too much. It was my first time booking ‘special assistance’ - the service which helps disabled or elderly passengers to safely navigate an airport and board a flight. So we set off, with some nerves but mostly anticipation. We needed a holiday - and I was determined not to let my health get in the way. But we’d booked this trip months before, so when the time finally came around, we weren’t keen to cancel.
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