Monday, November 8, 1998
Skies can be unfriendly for disabled travelers
BY DEBORAH KENDRICK
The Cincinnati Enquirer
That time of year is fast approaching when even people who rarely think about traveling are looking for air fare deals and studying calendars to plan gatherings with far-off family and friends.
A particularly heated discussion that recently appeared on an Internet list reminds me of how complicated such a simple wish can become for people with physical disabilities.
Imagine, for example, that you use a wheelchair. You have requested assistance well in advance and have been assured that your needs have been entered into the computer of your air carrier of choice. Something is lost in the interpretation of those needs, however, resulting in these scenarios:
You need help getting from the wheelchair to the airplane seat, but the person assigned to assist you complains loudly that he doesn't know if he can do this. Adding injury to insult, he then confirms the validity of his own uncertainty by transferring you like an annoying sack of potatoes and painfully twisting your ''good'' arm in the process.
Because you have difficulty walking and cannot bend your legs in the usual way, you have asked if you might be moved to bulkhead or first-class seating where there is additional floor area to accommodate your needs. Instead, you are placed on the aisle of a three-seat coach row, with a couple who climb over you three times in the first 25 minutes of travel. When you reiterate your needs to the flight attendant, the couple is moved to first class! (''Why them instead of me?'' this traveler wanted to know.)
You have brought your own motorized wheelchair and have been assured that it will be handled with care and brought to you for use at the gate. When you are finally brought in an airline wheelchair to the jetway, your chair's battery cannot be found.
You have asked to be escorted from airplane to luggage area and are assigned an assistant who ignores your legitimate concerns that you are not stabilized properly in the wheelchair, calls you ''honey'' and is oblivious to your disheveled and traumatized appearance when the thrill ride finally deposits you unceremoniously at your destination.
Left alone on the plane
Wheelchair travelers are not alone in finding such unpleasant surprises in navigating the friendly skies.
Consider the man who, because he is both deaf and blind, took ample precautions to alert airline staff to his communication needs. In making the reservation, he let his disabilities be known. When his assistant escorted him to the plane, she reiterated those needs. He even carried a card in his hand reminding flight attendants that writing in his palm was an efficient and acceptable means of communication.
Still, he wound up literally ''smelling the coffee'' but having none of it, because the flight crew found it easier to ignore him.
Or consider the blind man who was told to wait on the plane while 200 other passengers filed off - only to be forgotten and left alone until crew came to clean the airplane!
Legally, the Air Carriers Access Act says that airline personnel must provide the above types of assistance and do so with some aplomb. Morally, decency mandates that none of these issues are rocket science and that any gate agent, flight attendant or other airline - airport employee should know how to cope in the above situations.
None of these are isolated incidents. If you are a traveler with a disability, remember to state your needs clearly and concisely when booking your flight and at each junction on the day of travel. Don't whine or apologize (your ticket cost the same as everyone else's), but don't be afraid to state your needs.
If you are the relative or friend of a traveler with a disability, you can help by being present yourself to provide assistance to and from the airplane whenever possible.
The Golden Rule
Finally, if you work in the travel industry and have direct contact with travelers with disabilities, remember the Golden Rule when you don't know what else to do.
How would you want to be treated if you were that traveler being squashed or trampled in your seat, the one smelling the coffee, or waiting for someone else to enable your departure from the plane? It's easy to make the air travel experience a positive one for everyone if we remember, on both sides of the experience, that we're all just ordinary human beings.
Deborah Kendrick, a Cincinnati free-lance writer, is a nationally recognized advocate for people with disabilities. Write: Deborah Kendrick, Cincinnati Enquirer, 312 Elm St., Cincinnati 45202; e-mail: 71340.473@compuserve.com.
KENDRICK ARCHIVE
