I do not understand. When two sides have opposing views, you can generally look at the views in question, even when one side’s views are opposite your own, and see the reasoning that led to the adoption of that view. A good example would be the question of abortion; I think it should be legal, because the choice to terminate a pregnancy should be made by the pregnant woman – making abortion illegal takes that choice away from her. Those who oppose abortion and would seek to make it illegal do not see it as a matter of an individual’s sovereign right over their own body, but one of murder, of the taking of a life. I happen to disagree with them, but I can see where their opposition comes from.
Which is why I am so dumbfounded by the news that five major airlines in the United States – American, Delta, JetBlue, Southwest, and United – have signed onto an airline trade association lawsuit seeking to overturn a Biden-era rule that requires airlines to treat wheelchair users and their mobility devices with dignity. Using my “two sides to every argument” observation above, if the rule these airlines want to overturn requires airlines to treat wheelchair users and their mobility devices with dignity, what is it the airlines oppose? Treating wheelchair users and their mobility devices with dignity? So is their idea, then, that wheelchair users and their mobility devices should be treated without dignity?
The rule in question was announced last February by then–Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. At that time, the Department of Transportation said:
The proposed rule would require that airlines meet rigorous standards for accommodating passengers with disabilities safely and with dignity. The proposal will set new standards for prompt, safe, and dignified assistance, mandate enhanced training for airline employees and contractors who physically assist passengers with disabilities and handle passengers’ wheelchairs and specify actions that airlines must take to protect passengers when a wheelchair is damaged during transport. Notably, the proposed rule also would make it easier for DOT to hold airlines accountable when they damage or delay the return of a wheelchair by making it an automatic violation of the Air Carrier Access Act (ACAA) to mishandle wheelchairs.
As part of the Air Carrier Access Act, Secretary Buttigieg and the Department of Transportation established the much-needed Airline Passengers with Disabilities Bill of Rights; it is important to note that this Bill of Rights did not modify the rights of airline travelers with disabilities – it neither expanded nor restricted those rights, it simply listed them: it was a summary of existing law in ten key areas:
- The Right to Be Treated with Dignity and Respect
- The Right to Receive Information About Services and Aircraft Capabilities and Limitations
- The Right to Receive Information in an Accessible Format
- The Right to Accessible Airport Facilities
- The Right to Assistance at Airports
- The Right to Assistance on the Aircraft
- The Right to Travel with an Assistive Device or Service Animal
- The Right to Receive Seating Accommodations
- The Right to Accessible Aircraft Features
- The Right to Resolution of a Disability-Related Issue
When you are wheelchair-bound, as I am, many things, even the most banal (like eating) and basic (like shopping), can be difficult if not downright impossible.
Recently, I was downtown with a friend of mine. The weather is beautiful this time of year, so we dined al fresco at El Patio, a wonderful, open air Mexican restaurant in the heart of Palm Springs.
After we’d finished lunch, we decided to enjoy the weather and do some window shopping (i.e., looking in windows at what’s on offer, not shopping for windows!). As we headed south along Palm Canyon Drive we came upon a store that caught my friend’s interest. When we attempted to go inside, there was so much merchandise cluttered just inside the door that it was impossible to navigate a wheelchair into the shop. I should note: the clutter was not a mess, it was a display! I told him to go on in and I’d wait outside. About three shops down, there was a German Shepherd tied by his leash to a lamppost; I assume his human guardian was inside a shop while he waited patiently outside. Our eyes locked. It was as if he was saying to me “they make you wait outside too?” (but lassen sie dich auch draußen warten? because he was a GERMAN Shepherd)
I have traveled once by air since a wheelchair became a necessary, make that essential, part of my life. That was 16 years ago, and it was such an awful experience I haven’t flown again. One can stay in his or her own wheelchair until they are at the gate, after which you are strapped on to a thoroughly humiliating device known as an aisle chair by airline personnel; the aisle chair, as the name implies, is narrow enough to fit down the aisle between the two rows of seats on a plane. I felt like Hannibal Lecter in that scene from Silence of the Lambs where they roll him into a holding cell strapped to a refrigerator dolly. My wheelchair became cargo at that point and was stowed away with the luggage.
Airlines damage or lose thousands of wheelchairs every year. According to the Air Travel Consumer Report, in July 2021 there were 834 wheelchairs damaged by US airlines, an average of 28 per day. Disability advocates argue, I think correctly, that we need to change how we “think” about a statistic like that. Breaking the wheelchair of someone who relies on it to get from point a to point b is the same as breaking that person’s legs! US Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, an Iraq war veteran who lost both her legs in combat and uses a wheelchair to get around, agrees: “When you break my wheelchair, or you lose my wheelchair, you’ve taken away my legs.” So imagine if the second sentence of this paragraph read:
in July 2021 the legs of 834 airline passengers were broken by US airlines, an average of 28 per day.
I don’t think non-wheelchair users really understand what a wheelchair means to a person whose circumstances require the use of one. Or what being without it feels like. I can tell you, from personal, firsthand experience, it’s as if someone has said to you, “don’t move, just sit there.”
Cory Lee, founder of the travel site Curb Free with Cory Lee, which focuses on the accessibility challenges faced by travelers with disabilities, has traveled to 37 countries and all seven continents, but he says his $35,000 wheelchair comes back damaged about 25% of the time. Think about that. Imagine if you faced a 1 in 4 possibility every time you got on a plane you’d arrive at your destination with two broken legs!
And I haven’t even addressed the restroom issue: you can’t get to it, but if you’re lucky enough to (by way of an on-board aisle chair used inflight and requiring the beverage cart be stowed), the restroom is too small to enter and too cramped to use! On my last flight from Palm Springs in California to Anchorage in Alaska, I scheduled layovers along the way in San Francisco and Seattle so I could use a restroom with a disabled stall on the ground inside the airport; but the best laid plans of mice and men – at both stops, inflight personnel were quite annoyed that they had to assist me in deplaning (via an aisle chair), transport me to the gate, transfer me to gate personnel with an airport wheelchair (since mine was in the luggage hold), take me to a restroom inside the terminal, wait for me to complete my business, then repeat the whole process in reverse. They made it quite clear to me that despite my charming disposition and cheerful attitude I was a huge pain in the ass. Should I be made to feel like a nuisance just because along a rather lengthy flight path I needed to relieve myself?
I have since read stories on websites devoted to living with disabilities that many wheelchair users have developed a workaround: on longer flights they resort to urinating in bottles they’ve brought along in their carryon!
The rule – Final Rule on Ensuring Safe Accommodations for Air Travelers with Disabilities Using Wheelchairs (Word Version) – that the airlines are targeting was only finalized last December in the waning days of the Biden administration and it remains unclear how the Department of Transportation under its new secretary, Sean Duffy, will respond to the lawsuit. Last month, Senator Duckworth said that Sean Duffy had “pledged to support the legislation that was passed that would make air travel more accessible.”
It remains to be seen if he was just paying her lip service.