Air travel is stressful enough – long lines, security checks, surprise luggage fees and shrinking seats – but for one group of travels, flying can turn into a truly miserable experience. From problems getting on the plane, to difficulties checking in equipment, and even being unable to go to use the restroom onboard, wheelchair users always something to worry about.
But there is one thing that can really ruin a vacation: damage done to wheelchairs, which users’ depend on for mobility.
BBC reporter, Lucy Webster, who uses a powerchair, had so much damage done to hers by multiple airlines that she set out to uncover the scale of the problem. Here is her story.
I use a powerchair to get around; my cerebral palsy means my arms are too weak to propel a manual wheelchair. The chair is custom-built, heavy and extremely expensive.
When I fly, my chair goes in the hold. On two successive trips in 2013, to Dublin and Barcelona, it came off the flight home making a foreboding rattling sound.
A few weeks later, it stopped working. The repairs were costly and left me stuck in my university room, entirely reliant on others.
If I was going to continue travelling, I needed another plan.
I thought I’d solved the problem when I invested in another chair, which is specifically designed for travelling by air. The expensive piece of kit consists of a manual chair and an attachable motor.
When flying, the motor can be stored in a suitcase. The idea is that breakable parts are kept safe.
And yet, when I came to reassemble my chair after I arrived in Portugal last week, the motor had been bent out of shape. Five of my friends could not reattach it to the manual frame.
(EasyJet says it is “very rare” for its ground handling companies to damage wheelchairs. When it does happen, they say, they arrange for repairs and a replacement chair. The airline also points out its customer satisfaction amongst passengers with reduced mobility was 84% in 2016).
I spent the whole holiday in Portugal unable to move independently more than a few meters. And it turns out that my experience is far from unique.
Dan Dorszynski
After flying more than 40,000 miles all over the world this year, Dan Dorszynski’s wheelchair was broken on a short flight from Philadelphia to Detroit.
“The cargo guys couldn’t fit it into the cargo door so they crammed it in and broke the backrest, armrest, and a few other things on my chair,” he says.
Although his chair was “drive-able”, Dorszynski says it couldn’t be fixed in time for his next trip. He bought a used version of the same model to take instead.
“Upon leaving Sweden on the way to return home, the airline insisted that I check this chair at the ticket counter instead of taking it to the gate because it was too heavy.
“I argued a bit… however it was fruitless and I just decided to let them have it so it would not be an issue.
“I get to Chicago and after all that, my back-up chair never made it on the first flight. Here I am two days later wondering where that chair is.”
Michaela Hollywood
Michaela Hollywood has also had difficulties when flying.
“Pretty much every time I’ve flown before [her most recent flight] there have been problems,” she says.
“My chair has been lost for two weeks, only half of it brought back; stuck on the plane, stuck on the ground… my dad once had to actually put it into the hold himself.”
And Jeff Courtade was left “bedbound” in his house for “nearly a month” after a flight from San Francisco to Washington DC.
His highly-customized and pain-relieving chair was bent and rendered immobile.
“I am terrified of flying now,” he says.
‘A cultural problem’
In my opinion, the problem has three parts:
- How airports and airlines handle wheelchairs
- How they compensate passengers for the cost of repairs
- The difficulty getting a temporary replacement chair in order to carry on with holidays or everyday life
In the eyes of the industry, it seems, a wheelchair is the same – and as robust – as any other piece of luggage.
I have seen my own motor being flung into a trolley of suitcases. Others have found their powerchairs lying on their sides on conveyor belts.
Staff often do not know what they are handling – moving specially-positioned backrests and unplugging vital parts of chairs which cannot just be reattached.
Chairs get lifted and pushed in ways that damage them. My powerchair’s brakes were destroyed when staff pushed it without following instructions to set it to its manual settings.
All wheelchairs are different, but some basic training in how they usually work would go a long way.
Once a wheelchair is damaged, it is difficult and expensive to get it fixed. Transporting a broken powerchair involves specific vehicles and a lot of strength (they regularly weigh over 100kg).
Spare parts, particularly for customized chairs, can take weeks to arrive and cost hundreds of pounds. A new chair could cost thousands.
Being awarded compensation for these costs is also an uphill struggle.
“The issue is cultural rather than operational,” says Roberto Castiglioni, who set up the organization Reduced Mobility Rights after experiencing the challenges of travelling with his disabled son.
He now helps others to make successful compensation claims for damage or mistreatment.
Thanks to the division of responsibilities between airports and airlines, there is “endless (and useless) finger-pointing when something goes horribly wrong,” he says.
As for me, I eventually made it home from Portugal to the comfort and ease of my powerchair. I’ll be setting off on my holidays again next year – perturbed but thankfully not deterred.
But many will find themselves unwilling to entrust their most important belongings to an industry which – all too often – seems not to recognize their value.
What can wheelchair users do?
- Remove detachable parts such as head and arms rests, footplates and joysticks and carry them onboard
- Submit a Special Declaration of Interest before flying, allowing compensation claims above the usual cap to be made
- Label chairs with instructions on how to move them and which parts cannot be detached
- Pack detachable motors in sealed, hard cases
One response to “‘Airlines keep breaking my wheelchair’”
Leave a Reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
I fly a lot with my son, who is in a power chair, and can only say that US airlines are the WORST in this regard. In other areas of the world they have proper means of getting your power chair onto and off the airplane, whereas in the US they treat it like luggage… which means the chair breaks 8 out of 10 times. The airlines’ callousness is mind-boggling, they think that offering to pay for the repair will make things fine when in fact the reality is that parts don’t come for months, repair places are few and far between, and the wheelchair user is not able to find an easy replacement until their chair is fixed.