We interrupt your regularly scheduled gripe session to bring you some rare good news. Leslie Irby of Atlanta earned her official sport pilots license after successfully completing her first solo flight through Able Flight, an organization that strives to help people with disabilities get to the cockpit. This makes Irby the first black woman with a disability to get a pilots license, according to the website Because of Them We Can. Read more about Irby’s journey there!
A mum has revealed the ‘distressing’ ordeal she suffered at Stansted Airport after being forced to sit her four-year-old daughter who has cerebral palsy on the tarmac due to the lack of disability assistance from airport staff.
It comes as a study by the Data Investigations Unit at the Oxford Mail’s parent company Newsquest found more than 700 people with disabilities or reduced mobility were left stranded at airports across the UK between 2015 and 2018 due to errors and failures with assistance services.
Staff shortages, connection times, gate changes and system errors were blamed for passengers being forgotten, stranded and missing flights, despite booking assistance.
Read the rest in The Herald.
