As some of you may already know, I am not only Deaf, but I also have another disability, and that is I am in a wheelchair, so I am a wheelchair user, which I have been since between an age of 8 and 10, which is over two decades ago. I have written some articles somewhere on here that I mentioned my reason for being a wheelchair user, so some of you might know. Still, for those that don’t know, I wasn’t in a wheelchair after I was born since I mentioned I became a wheelchair user when I was 8 to 10 years old, but how that happened was that at the age of seven, I broke my femur in half on my right leg which is my strongest leg. I have a few friends who assumed that I am in a wheelchair because I am paralyzed from the waist down, but I am not paralyzed at all, and I can still feel both of my legs; I still can move my legs and whatnot, but after I get out of the hospital which I have spent for about a month I was in physical therapy to get myself back to walk again as I used to until that incident. For some reason, in physical therapy, everything was focused on my right leg, which is the leg where I broke the femur in half. All of that rehabbing goes into that leg with hardly anything for my left leg, so it ended up somehow weakening my left leg while at the same time, my right leg got its strength back and more, but not my left leg, so I could no longer walk at a lengthy distance. Then, I had trouble breathing when I walked and had a very bad spine, which I had surgery for at the age of four from my neck to my tailbone. Yes, there is a long scar from my neck to my tailbone that they cut wide open when I was at the age of three or four. So, with that combination of weakening, my left leg wasn’t focused on in my physical therapy as it was focused on my broken (right) leg; I started having oxygen problems (only if I stand or walk). My back, which gets worse as I get older, is what ended me up in a wheelchair for pretty much 3/4 of my life. So, being Deaf isn’t the only disability that I have; I am not able to walk or stand if it’s more than a minute at best, and that is why I said I am Deaf+ (Deaf Plus, which is what they call it that a person who is Deaf or Hard of Hearing that has other disability).
Now that it is out of the way, I want to talk about my fear of air travel as a wheelchair user. Do I fear flying in an airplane or helicopter? No, I don’t, but I fear the process. It is the process from the start to the end, especially when dealing with the people working at the airports.
I want to make a disclaimer that I have never flown, at least commercially, although I have flown in a helicopter twice. Both were trips to the hospital; the first one was when I got choked with food that refused to get out or swallowed, and the other one was when I broke the femur in my right leg in half because the hospitals in this rural area aren’t equipped to fix a big broken bone. The hospitals around here are pretty good for finding out what’s wrong with us, and then they will refer us to somewhere else that is a much longer drive from here or, if not too bad, make an appointment to see a specialist here. Now, talking about flying commercials, there are no airports or air flights around here, and the closest they are is about two to three hours’ drive away. Although there are two small airports here, it’s mostly for people who own small planes or helicopters and also for when some planes need to land in an emergency. Still, the runaways are small; as I said, they are meant for private plane or helicopter owners.
Now, for small airplanes or helicopters that are privately owned, I wouldn’t mind flying as a passenger. But a large airplane at some airports where many people go there to fly, I am afraid to fly for one reason, and that is they are known for giving disabled people, especially those who are in wheelchairs, bad treatment. If you go to the airport, they have some brochures and whatnot about how to fly as a wheelchair user. Commonly, anyone who is in a wheelchair that goes to the airport for their flight somewhere would have to go through full security scanning mainly because they have a wheelchair. Almost every time anyone goes to the airport, they must undergo full security treatment, but less for the people who walk unless they suspect they have something in their carry-on bags. But if you are a wheelchair user and you go to the airport, it’s almost a guarantee that you would have to deal with full treatment of TSA security just because they want to make sure that your wheelchair is not a bomb. Also, once you go through the security, you will be instructed to wheel through the tunnel or whatever they are called and stop at the plane’s door. Then, they will transport you from your wheelchair to their uncomfortable wheelchair to transport you inside the plane. They will transfer you from the airport’s wheelchair to the plane’s seat, and then they will get out with the airport’s wheelchair. Then the next thing, these loaders will start messing with your wheelchair, trying to guess how to transport your wheelchair to the belly of the plane, which is where, most of the time, people’s wheelchairs will get severely damaged. For instance, this guy named Shane, who is in a wheelchair, had a paper taped on his wheelchair telling them explicitly how to take care of his wheelchair because his wheelchair is custom fitted for him, and when he arrived at his destination’s airport, he found out that they have broken the custom-fitted seat that was only tailored to him, and made his wheelchair a no longer functional meaning no power coming on for his wheelchair.
Shane and his wife Hannah documented the video from the start to the end, including witnessing his wheelchair getting damaged by the loaders (people who load suits and stuff to the belly of a plane). It was a horrifying thing to watch, and that validated my fear of being willing to fly as a wheelchair user.
Not everyone realizes that our wheelchairs are our legs, and they are the only things that give us some independence so that we can go anywhere we want or like to. If anyone who works at the airport or anyone who will be tasked with taking care of our wheelchairs needs to be careful when it comes to handling our wheelchairs and for them to listen to us when we tell them how to handle our wheelchairs because we know our wheelchairs. They shouldn’t assume that they know what to do because every wheelchair isn’t the same; for instance, they would try to hard push an electric wheelchair without the wheels rolling and ram it into the airplane’s belly, which would result in them having a hard time handling our wheelchairs and us receiving them damaged or broken. If they had listened to us or asked us how they could handle them, we would’ve let them know where to unlock the brakes on the wheelchair; for my electric wheelchair, they are usually located where the footrests are so that they could push them freely with the wheels rolling rather than trying to push and being tough on a wheelchair that has brakes on or locked to the motors. Doing that would also risk damaging the motor or both motors.
When I talk about fear of flying commercially, as a passenger in a wheelchair, now you know why. I don’t want to have to go through the humiliation of getting a full TSA treatment by feeling me up, then trying to see if they could force me to stand up so they can take my wheelchair apart to see if it’s a bomb or not and then when that is done I get back in my wheelchair feeling the intense pain where I would have to try to stand and then having to be forced to go through a full scan just to double check that the TSA didn’t miss anything, then once I get to the airplane. They will force me to be transferred from my comfortable wheelchair to their uncomfortable wheelchair to transport me inside the plane, then transfer me to the plane’s seat. When I arrived at the destination of wherever I wanted to go, I would find out that my electric wheelchair would not work, which would end me up not being able to go anywhere because most electric wheelchair isn’t meant to be pushed or to push the wheels to roll as the tires are under the body so if they are damaged especially where the power doesn’t come on or something wrong with the motors then they are truly stuck. In some cases, they are lucky; like Shane above, they could find someone to come to the airport and fix the wheelchair, but that does not happen everywhere. When I was on a vacation trip to Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg in Tennessee with my mom and her friends, we took my mom’s van to load up my wheelchair in the back. In the last two days, I think, my electric wheelchair broke down when I tried to get onto a sidewalk in Gatlinburg, and one of the motors (some electric wheelchairs have two motors) suddenly stopped working. When that happened, I couldn’t go anywhere, but thankfully, I had my best friend Josh (I know the same name!) with me. We had to unlock the brakes on my electric wheelchair, and then he had to push me to a trolley (like a transportation bus) to get us back to the hotel where we were staying. I texted my mom to inform her that my wheelchair had broken down. So, we got to the hotel, and my mom started making calls. I started looking everywhere online trying to find someone to come and have my wheelchair fixed down there, but no luck as there was no one around there that would be able to fix it, or that they were too busy, or that they could not do anything to my wheelchair because they weren’t my provider for my wheelchair. So, I was confined to the hotel room for, I think, a day or two at the most, and that was no fun, but I was glad that I had my best friend with me so we could keep each other accompanied until the vacation ended.
We are in an era where technology is advancing, people are becoming more aware of the needs of disabled people, the airports are improving for the flyers that do not have a disability, and airplanes are getting better built with new features. It makes me wonder why they haven’t thought about what they can do for the flyers who are in wheelchairs. I mean, look at some transportation buses, some newer trains and whatnot now have wheelchair accessible, such as a designed spot with a lift by the door – like these trolleys in Pigeon Forge or Gatlinburg in Tennessee! By now, many airports should have a wheelchair accessible where we can bring in our wheelchair without having to get out of it and have a designed place inside the planes that is for wheelchair flyers only where we can ride over there with our wheelchairs and then our wheelchairs will be locked in with some locking system on the floor where a rod under the wheelchair will latch in. Then, it gets locked so that the wheelchair cannot be moved at all. Here is a video with an example:
Delta Air Lines unveiled that two years ago, and they still haven’t done it. I remember two years ago on Twitter, when I mentioned Delta Air Lines, letting them know that what they are doing is appreciative, and then they responded by saying that it was just a “concept.” A concept? A working concept is more like it, which can work just as they said, but only if they went ahead with the plan instead of dropping it. I also shared the video with other airliners suggesting that they should follow Delta Air Lines’s example, and in doing so, they would open the door to even more customers because the wheelchair users will finally feel comfortable to give it a chance to fly, allowing them to get out in the world to experience new things and giving the wheelchair users the peace of mind that their wheelchair will not be damaged since they would be sitting on it. Imagine that would also take some burden off the airliners and save some money because it is common for most wheelchairs to get damaged during their flight, and they would have to pay for the damages. It’s a shame that they didn’t go with it. Now the Department of Transportation sued them for 50 million dollars for damaging most of the flyer’s wheelchairs (you can read the press release by the Department of Transportation here), which could have been prevented if they had just done what Delta Air Lines was thinking of doing until they decided to drop it.
There is an Airline Passengers with Disabilities Bill of Rights; click here to read it. Speaking of the pain many wheelchair flyers experience with most airliners, I recommend watching this video below!
There are plenty of videos and articles where wheelchair travelers share their journeys that end with their wheelchairs damaged or no longer functional. Here’s one of the news released a video that shows how the airline/airport mishandle the passenger’s wheelchair.
Now, you think their mishandling of airline passengers’ wheelchairs is a big deal. Well, it is even bigger than you’d think. These wheelchairs aren’t cheap, so when the airport damaged a wheelchair, the passenger would fill out a form requiring the airport to reimburse the damaged wheelchair, which would cost them upwards of $30,000. The more customs would be fitting for the user, such as the seat itself and the adjustment they need to be able to drive them, or adding more features/options that they may need to make it more comfortable or better for them, such as the seat lift where you can raise the seat itself. If you think that it’s not a big deal that Medicare/Medicaid would take care of the damages and buy another one for them, then you think wrongly because it is somewhat hard to get them to approve the purchase of a wheelchair. Also, through them, they only limit one wheelchair every five or ten years, and we would be lucky if they last that long enough until it’s time to get a new one. So, to be able to get a new wheelchair through the insurance is out of the question unless you are up for a new one if it’s past five or ten years, depending on what insurance you have, so that leaves having the airport to pay for it which is required by the law. Not only that, but getting a new wheelchair or having the wheelchair repaired can take several weeks or even months!
Nonetheless, I would love to be able to travel to another country and learn about their culture and food, but to do that, I would have to book a flight. We are, again, talking about the fear of flying as a wheelchair user because, as you can see, it’s very common for airports to damage their passenger’s wheelchairs. Yes, we as wheelchair users are very cautious when it comes to our wheelchairs because they are the only way that many of us who are in wheelchairs get to be able to go somewhere or being able to get around at our house. As I said, they are our legs, and when anyone damages them, we lose our legs in a way. This is why, for many years, I have advocated for the airliners to turn that concept like the one shown in Delta Air’s video above into reality and for all airlines to do the same. So that I, along with other passengers in wheelchairs, would be able to travel by air with ease and that having our wheelchair with us inside the airplane would significantly minimize the chance of getting damaged. This is where I don’t get it; if the airliners do not want to make that concept a reality by having a designated place for wheelchair passengers with their wheelchairs in their airplanes, that would save them the expensive burdens of having to reimburse many passengers for their damaged wheelchairs. Do they prefer to pay each passenger several thousand dollars to get new ones or to have them repaired depending on the severity of the damages they did to them while at the same time making them suffer by not being able to enjoy their travel?
To airliners, if you want to do the right thing while at the same time lessen the burden of having to reimburse the wheelchair travelers for damaging their wheelchairs and making sure that they get to their destination happy which that could turn us wheelchair passengers into repeat customer of yours knowing that you make sure that we travel by air with our dignity by having a wheelchair passenger designated place on your airplane so that we can stay with our wheelchair instead of being forced to get out and into your not so comfortable wheelchair to be transported inside the airplane then having us transferred from that wheelchair to the airplane’s seat. That’s a lot of hassle if you think about it, time-consuming for both sides, so if you add a designated place for the wheelchair passengers on your airplane where we can wheel ourselves in your airplane and park over that designated place, which they can be locked or latched in so that our wheelchair doesn’t go anywhere. Talk about a lot less hassle, time-saving, and I am sure saving a lot of money for you! That might finally ease my fear of traveling by air, knowing that I wouldn’t have to deal with all that, such as being forced to transfer to the airport’s wheelchair and then have me transported inside the airplane then transfer me from it to the airplane’s seat and then having to worry about the high chance of arriving a place where my wheelchair would be damaged to the point that is no longer functioning or lost! Plus, it is 2024, almost 2025, and we should already have a place designated for wheelchair passengers a long time ago, but here we are in 2024, and we don’t have that, which is no excuse, in my opinion!
I hope something happens, such as making airplanes more wheelchair accessible, especially without forcing us to abandon our wheelchairs and take them to storage in the airplane where they would likely be damaged. I hope that one day, I can travel by air, with my wheelchair inside the airplane, and travel before I am no longer here. Still, with their slow pace in doing something about wheelchair accessibility for their airplanes, I probably never will get to it. If not me, then I hope that at least the next generation who is in a wheelchair will be able to travel by air without handing over their wheelchair to be mishandled. I would love to visit a few countries like Japan, South Korea, France, the UK, and Italy. If it’s domestic, I would love to travel by air to my longtime dream place, New York City, New York.
Please, airports, airliners, and others make it easier for us who are in wheelchairs to travel! Or would you prefer that we keep forcing you to reimburse us for the damages to our wheelchairs? Think logically for once; thank you!
Thank you for reading this article. It’s all about my fear of flying because of how they did many wheelchair users wrong, especially since they have patterns of more than damaging their wheelchairs. So, until then, I am advocating for them to do something about that, especially having a designated place on the airplanes that is reserved for wheelchair users. I hope you have a great day! I also hope that all of you stay warm as we head for the winter season. If you know me, I am a bigger fan of winter than any other season, but only as long as nothing that would knock out our power, damage our plumbing, and not get in the way of our doctor’s appointment! If you have any information you think is worthy of everyone knowing, please contact me here!
Joshua “Joshie” Sullivan.
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