#BringDianaJamesHome

Our Experience with Airport Disability Services, and What We Have Learned

Posted on July 17, 2023July 17, 2023 by Aaron

Our Experiences

This post is a complicated one to write as we are in the midst of attempting to file claims and pursue legal action against those that may have been involved in the failures of disability services to protect Diana and get her to her gate on the leg of her trip from the US. It is important to note that her disability services experience at the Frankfurt layover was fantastic. They were helpful, polite, and had very accessible transportation. A completely distinct experience from what she had at the US airport.

In the US, Diana was abandoned at one of those airline clubs, not near her gate, and the disability agent never returned, she was then forced to rush herself to the gate without any assistance, in fact she had to endure misdirection as well. Among the reasons Diana requested assistance was mobility issues. We have attempted to obtain the video documentation, but have been thwarted by their complaints of security issues and lack of staff to review the footage. The reality is more likely that they also want to complicate a lawsuit, requiring us to speed up finding a lawyer willing to take the case. It seems only a lawyer can force their hand, before they erase the footage, which hopefully they haven’t already. As it is a challenge to sue airlines in the US, finding a lawyer has been difficult.

Air Travel and the Air Carrier Access Act

Posted on November 14, 2022July 16, 2023 by Aaron

Original Link | Metropolitan Airport News

| BY JULIA LAURIA-BLUM | NOVEMBER 14, 2022 | 14 MINS READ

This October, the Air Carrier Access Act of 1986 (ACAA) celebrated its 36th anniversary. The ACAA (Public Law 99–435) prohibits discrimination against persons with disabilities in commercial air transportation. Airlines are required to provide passengers with disabilities with many types of assistance, including wheelchair or other guided assistance to board, deplane, or connect to another flight, and seating accommodation assistance that meets passenger’s disability-related needs, as well as assistance with the loading and stowing of assistive devices. After a lengthy rulemaking process that included regulatory negotiations involving representatives of the disability community and the airline industry, the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) issued a final ACAA rule in March 1990, which has been amended 15 times by the USDOT to further improve access to transportation facilities and services.

The Centers for Disease Control estimates that 61 million adults in the U.S. live with a disability, which includes impairment in mobility, cognition, hearing, vision, independent living, and self-care.

Air travel for people with disabilities can be exceptionally challenging if airport facilities are not accessible and reasonable accommodations are not made, as in the most recent amendment to the Air Carrier Access Amendments Act (ACAA) of 2021. This bill expands provisions prohibiting discrimination against disabled individuals by an air carrier. Specifically, it lists certain actions that an air carrier must take or may not take concerning a disabled individual. Despite these amendments, people with disabilities, including veterans, continue to experience significant barriers with traveling in air transportation, such as damaged assistive devices; inaccessible aircraft, lavatories, communication media, delayed assistance; the treatment of service animals, inadequate disability cultural competency, and a lack of suitable seating accommodations.

Despite calls to improve, air travel is still a nightmare for many with disabilities

Posted on November 9, 2021July 16, 2023 by Aaron

Original Link | NPR

November 9, 202112:57 PM ET
Heard on Morning Edition
By Joseph Shapiro, Allison Mollenkamp

A man using a wheelchair hands his ID to an officer at a security screening checkpoint at Orlando International Airport in 2020.
Paul Henness/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Anxiety, dread, humiliation — even potential injury. For many people with disabilities, these are part of the routine of airline travel, from getting to the airport gate to getting on and off the plane.

In 2018, Congress demanded that airlines and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) make flying better for people with disabilities — but three years later, NPR has found, passengers report that the same problems keep happening over and over.

On a trip last year, Heather Leiterman, who is blind, was told by a TSA agent to take the harness, collar and leash off her guide dog, a black Labrador named Coastie. She explained to the agent that to do so would mean she’d lose control of the animal.

“That’s how they know they’re working. When the harness is on, they’re working. When the harness is off, that’s when they’re just a dog.”

But the agent insisted — even though the TSA’s own procedures say those items “do not require removal” for screening. “He was very hostile,” Leiterman says, and threatened not to let her on the plane if she didn’t comply.