Air Travel is a Nightmare for Many Individuals with Disabilities

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In an article posted by NPR, air travel is still a nightmare for many individuals with disabilities despite calls for improvement.

According to this article, in 2018 Congress demanded that airlines and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) make flying better for people with disabilities, However, three years later, NPR has found passengers report that the same problems keep happening over and over.

The article shares two of the more than 225 responses NPR received to a social media call-out regarding air travel experiences for people with disabilities. In response to the call-out almost everyone reported horror stories. Among the responses were:

• wheelchairs broken in transit

• wheelchairs lost in transit

• airport escorts who were late or never show up

• children with autism separated from their parents at security gate

• pat-downs that felt like sexual assaults

• loud, abusive TSA agents

The Air Carrier Access Act was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan in 1986. In the 2018 FAA Reauthorization Act, Congress told the airlines and the TSA to fix air-travel problems like those listed above and demanded more training, better and faster service and taking better care of equipment, such as wheelchairs. Apparently this has not happened. As a result, in March 2021, Congress introduced the Air Carrier Access Amendments Act of 2021, which would strengthen federal action against airlines that violate the rights of passengers with disabilities and would give those passengers a right to sue. It would also require aircraft to be redesigned to include safer storage of wheelchairs and to provide better access on the plane.

Most of the complaints that NPR heard from passengers were the result of TSA agents not following their training. One respondent said that for her autistic son, going through airport security is "like a gauntlet of everything horrible for him." TSA agents, strangers to him, yell orders, rush him, take his things from him to be screened, and separate him from his family. TSA agents, she says, "are not exactly calm, kind, gentle or patient."

Another common complaint involves individuals who use wheelchairs for mobility. Wheelchairs don't fit on most planes or in aircraft toilet rooms. So some individuals who use a wheelchair for mobility will fast and not drink fluids before flying. Because the aisles of most commercial aircraft are narrow, people using a wheelchair need help from airline employees or airport contractors to lift them from their own wheelchair into a smaller aisle chair that can fit through the aircraft.

It’s not all bad news. The TSA Cares program allows people to call in advance and be met by a trained airport agent who will escort people with disabilities through security. There were 14,674 requests for assistance in the program's first year — fiscal year 2015 — and 27,711 requests in 2019. The TSA says the largest number of requests came for people with autism — who can find the noise and chaos of an airport difficult to handle.

According to the article, at an October celebration of the 35th anniversary of the Air Carrier Access Act, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said there was a "moral imperative and an economic imperative" to make flying a more welcoming experience for passengers with disabilities. Still, there's a lot of work remaining to make flying safer and more dignified for disabled individuals.

Thank you.