A Massachusetts family says JetBlue flight attendants discriminated against their disabled son on a flight out of T.F. Green, breaking the law in the process. They say the flight attendants didn’t allow him to use a special harness in the middle seat, which led to emotional and physical trauma.
Read the rest on ABC6.
Fiona MacKinnon, 54, claims she can no longer travel on a Loganair flight from Tiree to Glasgow for her regular cancer treatments. Fiona has dystonia, a neurological condition that severely restricts her mobility. She walks with the aid of crutches and uses a stairlift at home. This means she can’t climb the 12 steps to the Twin Otter Loganair plane at Tiree Airport.
The artist, who lives alone in Kirkapol, had previously used an S-Max stairclimber – a mechanised system that helps pull a wheelchair up a flight of stairs. But in February Fiona was told by Loganair that she could not use the device if she weighed more than the 120kg safety limit.
Read the rest on The Sunday Post.
In the event that a wheelchair frame and restraint system can be certified, the challenge will then be finding a suitable space in the cabin, as Geraldine Lundy, passenger accessibility manager at Virgin Atlantic, explains.
“Regulations mean that you can’t put someone in a wheelchair at the door. And if you envisage how narrow the aisles are on any aircraft existing at the moment, you wouldn’t be able to fit the wheelchair down the aisle, so you would need to work with the manufacturers,” says Lundy. “The really good thing is that people are now working on it. I think it will happen but there is still a way to go.”
Lundy believes it could take another 10-15 years before passengers will be able to bring their own wheelchairs into the cabin and remain seated in them during flight. She says that PriestmanGoode’s Air Access concept, or another similar concept, “would be the most achievable next step.”
Read the rest at Aviation Week.
