To be fed up of airport accessibility services?

[OneLilacHedgehog]

Recently I was stuck on a plane on the tarmac for one and a half hours waiting for the lift that takes people off the plane, who can't get down the stairs. One woman got so fed up she went down the stairs on her bum.

None of this is unusual. We have to book accessibility services ahead of time, get to the airport in plenty of time, and yet still there is often lots of waiting around because they have not organised enough staff to provide the service. It's staffing, when we left the plane we could see three lifts not being used, so they obviously were short staffed.

Disabled people pay for their tickets, but are expected to just put up with a standard of service that would lead to outrage if able bodied people had to put up with it. Imagine if planes routinely sat on the tarmac for up to a few hours before they brought the steps to the plane.

Wheelchair accessible taxis have to be booked. I book one. If you just try and ring on spec you can wait a long time. That might be different if you are coming into a large airport like Heathrow, I don't know.

There is no way to manage public transport in a wheelchair without one friend or partner to push you and one other person to manage the suitcases. The public transport from the regional airport we use only has limited stops, so we would still need to get from there to home.
If you can walk a bit, all of this becomes a bit easier i.e. you can get in a normal taxi if that is all that us available to use.

Edited to add there is no train, only a bus.

@whereonthestair I agree. Even when I could manage stairs I was very slow so they made me used the ambi lift so as not to slow others down.

I normally get plonked in a room with no access to a toilet for 3 hours before some one comes to get me to the gate.

I have an electric wheelchair and a suitcase with wheels and zip along with the case.

Zurich and some other airports have taxis that take wheelchairs at exit. U.K. airports generally don’t but I usually train to my local airport.

Sometimes ambulent pax wait for stairs, wait for immigration staff etc. Your experience while very poor is just one experience. Some pax will have waited very little time after the rest of the pax have left the aircraft and then will go to the quicker passport control because they have aircraft assistamce- is this fair to the other passengers especially when many of these passengers are cognitively able to queue. It's all swings and roumdabouts and while I think your experience was bad I don't believe it is discrimination.

To add it's also not in the airlines interest to have pax on planes for a long amount of time after landing. Some aircraft have very quick turnarounds and need the aircraft back in the air.

This is why I don’t fly with DS anymore, especially as my dad who is also a wheelchair user often travels with us. It all seems way more hassle than it’s worth.

we tend to cruise out of Southampton when we want to go abroad which is so much easier! We are trying Eurostar next year so hopefully that works out.

I can’t recommend Brittany ferries high enough, they were amazing. We use the additional needs option because dd is autistic (basically saves me money to list it I fully admit) and I met so many amazing parents dealing with complex disability and Brittany is so good they told me, complex medical equipment etc no problem, no risk of breakage, deal easily with both assistance dogs and family pets, and you take your adapted car with you. The Atlantic Coast of Spain is really lovely too

@SupernaturalAddict the jumping the queue at passports is to free up staff. It's nothing to do with the disabled people. And trust me, there is lots of waiting around if you are disabled. I used to get through the airport much quicker when I did it myself.

Wow I am impressed. I can't even imagine the logistics of steering a wheelchair and a suitcase at the same time.

My ds arrived in Berlin. Got off the plane via the lift quickly.

The accessible bus to the airport was going to be a while and ds can stand a little and transfer easily.

They asked him if he could get the standard bus. Ds said yes. Then said they’d take his wheelchair and meet him ……..:

At the other end of the terminal.

Ds just laughed and looked at them until the penny dropped.

They called the accessible bas whilst he waited on the tarmac. Luckily only for about 10 minutes .

Ds has an active wheelchair so uses a travel backpack - think it’s about 80L

We’ve not had any problems (yet!!) flying from Stansted and Heathrow. The only time things were a bit tense was when the pilot had to get my dads wheelchair from the hold and bring it upstairs because the ground crew refused to bring it up. We’ve never had to wait longer than 10 minutes so have been lucky. Perhaps flying w Ryanair is good because they’ve got such a tight schedule for turnarounds.

the other thing I find irritating and disrespectful is when the people ask “what’s wrong with your dad”. It’s none of your bloody business what’s wrong with him, but he needs your full assistance from check in to seat so hop to it!

@TheWildZebra I have waited over an hour with ryanair while people are queuing up outside to get on. Maybe it's my local airport that is shit?

Thank you for this. I will look into it.

I have looked at cruises but there day trips are rarely accessible. So fine if you just want to cruise, but not great otherwise. As I said I was an adventurous traveller.

I've seen this too. Ideally as a visually impaired person I need someone's arm because it's usually so busy but can't always get someone because of the lack of staff

The one thing I can't understand is why I'm told to be in the waiting area and hour before the gate is even announced.

I travel a lot, and only experienced this once at an airport abroad.

I travel through Manchester, and it's always been great. The guys even offer to take me around duty free. But I usually go in the 18+ lounge.

We had a very unfortunate experience on our first flight. Explained our son has autism and congenital spinal scoliosis and a recent stress fracture to his upper spinal column, which is exacerbated by standing for too long.
Went straight to the pre booked assistance desk where we were asked if he needs a wheelchair “not unless there’s too much standing around”
We were pushed into the “regular” queue, had no one to ask or speak to and no way to get out of the queue and to the shorter assistance queue where we should have been. My son was actually crumpled in pain, crying and sweating before we could get to any help whatsoever, and by then our first holiday abroad had already been tainted by people just not doing their jobs very well.
It’s a shocking insight into how those with disabilities are treated!

Last time I flew the airport staff were excellent. It was SwissAir and run like a military operation. Only one person was rude - some minimum wage security oik at Manchester. I gave him a stern talking to in my teacher voice and reminded him I was old enough to be his grandmother and had done my share in the community. He did have the grace to apologise.

I also had another passenger ask what was my disability and when I told him arthritis he said "Oh my wife has that but she doesn't like to make a fuss." He was probably sorry he opened his mouth because he then got my speech on how he was labouring under a hopelessly outdated model of disability. Never argue with a retired academic because you will get chapter and verse on the Equality Act and wish you had never opened your mouth.

I don't travel any more and would rather cut my throat with a rusty saw than visit another airport.

If planes can have stairs for each plane, or a tunnel... I do not see why a lift is so hard to organise.

Planes are fairly closely tracked, you know where they are you know how many you have in a day, its not like they generally show up unannounced, they're not a flocking species that show up en masse because you've got nicer aviation fuel than the next airport down the bloody road.

Why doesn't someone come up with a replacement for stairs that everyone can use, so you only need one way off the plane if its not the air bridge option?

The bottom line is money - airlines make less money if they provide accessibility routinely, for all. I appreciate they are businesses and do need to make a profit... I do not accept that they need to make as much profit as they actually do.

@ToffeePennie I am so sorry to hear that. I learnt ages ago accessibility services ignore you if you are physically disabled but don't need a wheelchair. I suspect that is why some book wheelchairs when they could manage with other adjustments instead.

I think Frank Gardner from the BBC has documented similar experiences on a number of occasions. So this is a regular occurrence - in addition to wheelchairs being damaged in the hold.

I have a sunflower yanyard but also a National Disability Card which has to be verified. Sadly only the sunflower yanyard gets recognised.

That's awful. But you're right until you or someone in your family is disabled there is no insight into how badly disabled people are treated. It's disgraceful.

I’m ex cabin crew too. I was long haul at LHR. It was always embarrassing how badly passengers needing assistance were treated. We constantly waited 45 minutes after walking passengers had disembarked for the high lift.
Before the London Olympics we had to do disability awareness courses, and for a few months we experienced how things ought to be, but within six months of the Olympics things slid back to being dreadful again.

I have a severly disabled child. He uses a wheelchair and also has cognitive disabilities so I have experienced the system from both sides as I used to be cabin crew too (gave up due to his needs and disabilities).

You are being unreasonable. It is not practical to have a lift at every remote gate/ non airbridge. In the UK reasonable adjustments are just that 'reasonable' having an ambi lift at every gate and enough staff to support every passenger on every flight incase they is not reasonable. In a perfect world no disabled pax would wait longer than any other pax but that isn't the way the world works.

You may book airport assistance with the airline in advance but realistically the airport doesn't get the numbers that say they require the ambi lift until the flight deck advise them not long before landing. The airport may have to five flights with 20 passengers on each plane requiring help at the same time or they could have none.

You were just really unlucky in your experience.