AIBU to question sunflower lanyards for adults at airports?

This is what I always do. As I get older I find flying, and airports in particular, more and more stressful, despite having flown almost literally all my life. Special assistance generally gets us on and off the plane first.
I first flew, with my mother, when I was just six weeks old and we went to join my father in the Middle East.
However, flying now is totally, totally different, it’s an exercise in mass transit and we have to learn to cope with it if we want to travel.
Noisy, crowded airports can feel threatening and overwhelming. I find diazepam/ Valium helpful although doctors don’t like prescribing it for ‘fear of flying’ any more, but they might for severe travel anxiety.

I suspect staffs patience will soon be wearing thin once they’re accommodating the 500th 🌻 of the day. Inevitable.

.....and here we have a goady post..looking for support to attack disabled people. That support comes running.

You have no idea if it is "abused"

People drive too fast on the roads....let's withdraw all cars 🤦‍♀️

Wow billionaires really don't need to generate all the hate amongst people in society do they? Some will just be me, me, me ...less for others, less for others...so so easily

What exactly do you mean? Do you think I shouldn’t have one?

I am also neurodiverse, diagnosed before you ask, and I used to just struggle through airports.

is it some sort of Brucie bonus because I was raped?

Oh yes trains as a wheelchair user ….
Not enough space planned for baggage’s so they somehow exoect people in wheelchair to deal with the abuse.
And if not abusive, to deal with suitcases all around them, ready to fall into them. And then annoyed if you say it’s dangerous. ‘But where you want me to put them?’

So I got violently raped and almost killed just so I could have a sunflower fucking lanyard at the airport.

yeah. Right.

Not wearing as thin as it would be dealing with an autistic meltdown in the middle of security that could have very easily been avoided if the traveller had been able to, I don’t know, have some visible indication that they might need support.

My neighbour looks normal but has severe dementia and regularly repeats herself, gets confused etc. Why would you deny her a way of communicating that there is something wrong when she can’t do this herself? She can barely string a word together

stop policing other people fgs. They’re not affecting your journey so just leave them alone

Actually, that’s too much. Yes we all know there are some people who have developed, usually self diagnosed, conditions for attention seeking purposes. Sometimes people we know. However, questioning the needs of blind people is shitty. Who are you to query that? You should back off a little.

They're so overused that they have lost their meaning. I don't think many people pay much attention to them or make adjustments anymore.

Anyone with lived experience of disability, and yes, I include mental health conditions in that, who wants to wear a sunflower lanyard should be able to do so without having to justify themselves to people who clearly don’t understand disability or reasonable adjustments. I really don’t think we need to engage with or fight back against these people. Their comments are a reflection of them, not of disabled people. “Do better” is trite and reductive when there isn’t even a meaningful argument being made. They’ve simply exposed their own ableism, and frankly, it’s embarrassing. I’m ignoring them.

How exactly does it hurt you?

It doesn't.

You just enjoy judging and moaning.

It’s sad that the lanyard has been misused. I had 2 friends wearing them during Covid lockdowns as they didn’t want to wear face masks as they believed it was all a conspiracy.

I don’t really understand this.

there’s various types of lanyards you can get.

my friend who is partially sighted has a big one with a large fuckoff badge on it that says “blind”

I know deaf people can buy one that says deaf.

nobody vets these. They’re just useful info.

personally I have several and some of mine have cards on in multiple languages that explain my physical disabilities.

I got mine off Amazon. The deaf lanyards and the blind lanyards can also be got from Amazon. I don’t see why this is a problem - anyone silly enough to walk around with a lanyard saying “blind” who isn’t is a bit stupid surely?

anyone can book airport assistance. There’s no requirement to be disabled and in fact most of the people I see using it are elderly people who can’t walk far but wouldn’t really consider themselves disabled, just old.

most airport assistance desks will give you a sunflower lanyard if you haven’t got one as it helps the crew at the receiving airport.

cannot imagine why you’d care about this.

25% of the UK population has a disability...so you can see that a sunflower lanyard is dramatically underused.

Though thats not the issue, it's fun to attack disabled people right?? (Certainly here..and rising 1930s style)

The thing is you are only 1 accident or illness away from being disabled...but yeah reduce the small accommodations that exist.

Who benefits??

Not goady at all. I am all for support for those people who need it, but the ease of getting the lanyard means that support gets diluted so often those who can’t travel without it are those who miss out. It’s like the abuse of radar keys makes it harder for those who have to use disabled toilets.

DS is severely autistic. He needs the support I sadly don’t find the lanyard helps with that at all though as the system is so wide and wearing it tells you very little. Thankfully DS will never travel alone so I am there to advocate for him. He is also highly unlikely to ever fly as the whole process would be way too much for him to cope with.

I have seen that poster post for years shes about the least goady poster i can think off i also know from her posts she has a lot of personal experience of disabillity .

I have mobility problems and use my powerchair through the airport and take it right up to the gate, it goes into the hold and then is brought to the aircraft door after the flight. Because of this I don’t need to use the Special assistance so I don’t get to go the back way through security. I have a sunflower lanyard with my National access card on it. The card has symbols on it that lets staff know what my difficulties are. I don’t expect any special treatment or to go though security first but I do need to go through a security lane that has the staff and equipment to scan me in my chair. My disability might be obvious but I also have a stoma and I know sunflower lanyards are recommended for stoma patients because they may need access to a toilet quickly and you can get cards that explain that in multiple languages to wear on the lanyard.

What I am saying isn’t very complex or difficult to understand.

I understand the concept of a sunflower lanyard. Obviously. In a perfect world, only those with genuine needs would wear one. In the imperfect world, whereby you can buy one for a fiver off Amazon, and self diagnose yourself with autism based off a TikTok reel, then yes I do believe we have a problem.

That problem being, if more and more people start to wear them, individuals with genuine needs will be dismissed from airport staff and members of the public.

Like I said, it’s not rocket.

That is silly as the lanyards were nothing to do with not being able to wear a mask. The Sunflower scheme website even sold masks with sunflowers on.
And the Gov made it clear that you did not need to wear a lanyard to show you could not wear a mask.

This thread is a fucking disgrace.

there are these threads on repeat on here and it’s bloody awful.

autism doesn’t exist. Everyone claims to have adhd. My next door neighbours wife’s dog told me that they claimed eleventy million quid and a free car and it was dead easy to get

I do not understand why mumsnet let them stand tbh.

My teen is blind and attends one of two specialist national colleges for blind young people. Her college is about 200 miles away from our home. The easiest way for DD to get there is a train, a 15 minute walk across Andy Burnham’s favourite city, another train and then a taxi. This is great when it all goes well. I book passenger assistance well in advance (and that’s another thing, disabled people can’t just travel spontaneously as travel companies require notice). Heading back to college last week, DD’s second (main) train developed a fault and passengers were offloaded 30 minutes into the 2.5 hour journey. DD phoned me in a panic and I had to scramble the passenger assistance people to help her board her new train, for which she waited one hour. Just as well as two trainloads of people were trying to board three carriages and despite the help of the passenger assistance man and DD’s visible white cane, other passengers were still apparently jostling them out of the way.

The assistance staff need to do their jobs. End of.

My point entirely.

It just signals to staff that someone has a hidden disability so they might take longer to process and instruction or difficulty communicating so staff are a bit more patient if doing something like patting them down.

Ive never seen people wearing them get any special priviledges like different queues in airports but I guess each airports different.

To be honest ive only seen small numbers of people wearing them at all in airports so im not coviniced they are massively abused.