traveling with a disabled passenger
 

My wife and I regularly fly internationally. My wife is a paraplegic and requires a wheelchair to move about.

We usually fly Continental Airlines (AMS to IAH to SAL, and back) and have found Continental cabin crew to be most professional when dealing with my wife's disability. I am interested in best practices, not only from a cabin crew perspective but that of a disabled passenger as well.

As cabin crew, is there any advice that anyone would like to share, so that I can not only make sure that my wife's travels are comfortable but that the cabin crew are not overly-occupied with my wife. I notice that, especially on busy flights, even the best cabin crew can sometimes get frustrated and stressed. I want to make everyone's flight the most pleasant.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Pity nobody has responded to you. My wife is disabled and we have not flown for several years, despite wishing to do so. I would be interested in any replies..

Hi there!

Just wanted to say I admire you guys for not letting disability get in your way of enjoying travel!!!

I've seen great and not so great behaviour from both pax and crew in this respect... also, as you have flown on a US airline (CO) you'd probably have had this high standard as they are very strict with US law relating to treatment of passengers with disabilities onboard. Some airlines in other parts of the world are catching up but it's a slow process.

A few tips from me to make things easier for yourself (and you probably already know these, but, here goes)

Check with the airline when booking if they have any aircraft equipped with an accessible toilet. On Airbus especially, these are two lavatories side by side with a moveable wall between them to convert into one big access bathroom that you can push an aisle chair into, rather than trying to transfer your wife through a small folding door into the lav (I'm not sure what your personal situation is and whether this is even relevant, but SO MANY passengers I've spoken to have been totally unaware that some planes even have this available) SeatGuru can be a good resource to check out the seating plans and see where you might be most comfortable. Obviously exit rows are a no-no but somewhere easy to get in an out of shouldn't be hard to find. Also, check if all the aircraft in the fleet have moveable armrest, or only some rows. This can be really handy and make things much easier. Believe it or not some check-in crew can be clueless as to this sort of thing so might not give you the best seats in this regard.

Let the airline/crew know what you do and don't need. We're not supposed to make assumptions about your wife's ability and therefore all we can really ask is "How may I best assist you?" If you need us to help, great! Let the airline know when booking & again during checkin/boarding. If you don't need any help, even better. I prefer to let the family get on with it if they are comfortable with that, rather than getting in the way and making things even more stressful.

Some airlines have specialised equipment onboard (e.g. slide board for transferring between chair and seat, Johnny belt to support a passenger who has difficulty standing upright, torso support that's used with the regular seatbelt are just a few examples.)

Qantas have a specially-designed lifter to transfer a passenger from their own chair to the aisle chair and seat if needed, it's meant to assist one or two ground crew rather than needing a whole bunch of people and to make it safer and more comfortable for the passenger as well. All these things might seem obvious to the average passenger but unless the airline or traveller communicate sometimes it ends up in a situation where the crew don't want to ask/assume and the passengers might not tell us what they really need.

When it comes to mealtimes, you can order special meals on some airlines but I think it's always a smart idea to BYO for your circumstances. Dcotor's letters (if necessary) and anything needed for a long flight... check also if you get an extra baggage allowance and what the procedure is regarding transfer from wheelchair to aircraft (can your wife use her own chair to the door, or is it taken at check-in to be loaded, for example- often an issue with low-cost airlines to save time)

I guess this is all probably old news to you but please know there are many crew out there who want to help you the best way they can but often just don't know how... I think the most important thing is for each side to just communicate as much as possible with the other, and from your side, allow the crew as much time as possible to do things that you need, as you mentioned during service times things can get very busy. If you have a rough idea of when you might need help to say, take your wife to the lavatory (using the aisle chair) give as much notice as you can so the crew can give you their full attention. That way neither side gets stressed out or feels rushed and can give you all the help you need (and none that you don't ;)

If there's anything else you think of that you want to know, fire away!! Hope this helps and happy travels :)

Thank you both very much for so much information. We had no idea that some aircraft had larger toilets, which is why we no longer fly. There maybe hope then...

The power of PPRuNe :)

Excellent and extensive answers from both givemewings & bubblyguy here. :ok:

LHR Director, reading your last I understood that the availability of extra large lavatories for people with disabilities is not common knowledge.
So I checked my own airline's website, and its info pages for disabled travelers.

Lots of useful information about the whole process, but no mention of the special lavs that I know we have on 2 of the 3 aircraft types I work on. :confused:

I have fired off a mail informing our customer services department of this oversight. Thank you.

Very many thanks Juud.

I have flown with lots of airlines in the past. I just wanna say that Emirates is one of the best customer inflight service for the disabled passengers as cabin crew have been so nice, friendly and kind to me when I was on Emirate. I have never never felt that in my life. It was far beyond than my expectations because they treated me like I'm a movie star. So I give Emirates 5 stars for everything. I know they have been working so hard to make sure pax feel like home on the plane and yes they have done very good job.

EK cabin crew are so friendly, nice, polite, lots of sense of humor, eager to help pax, love talking to pax and big smile! :O

How to proceed
 

As a US Paramedic with years of experience not only in responding to emergencies, part of my experience has been patient care for patients with disabilities who simply needed to be transported to doctors offices and hospitals for care and treatment. Each patient is handled differently based on their disability and although patients may be paraplegic and even quad, they experience difficulties that do include pain and you really need to know how to manage and mobilize these patients as easily as possible with an emphasis on maintaining their dignity as well. Too often they are embarrassed and fear they are a burden to the general public so they stay home and do not travel. They also fear the unknown and small things that we take for granted such as lav access are huge.

This is one part of why I've been so interested in starting a business of disability assistance for travelers. The other part is to provide airlines staff for inflight emergencies that could range from chest pain to allergic reactions to panic attacks for pax inflight. Yes cabin crew are trained and do have to check off on these skills to maintain their licensing but, every situation is different and unless this is something you do almost every day, you lose alot of that knowledge and that increases a lack of confidence which can affect patient care as well. I've assisted in inflight emergencies quite a few times and I've never met a cabin crew or flight deck officer who wasn't glad I was on board. I've even been offered air miles which I respectfully declined.

I would love to continue my career in the medical field to include travel and assisting disabled pax. Not only do I have the medical experience, I also have experience working for the airlines on the ramp and have grown up in aviation. For those of you with business degrees and a general knowledge of business start up, what are your recommendations? My first thought on this would be to offer Paramedics, RN's, Doctors etc who are as skilled the ability to fly non rev in lieu of offering their services to the airlines. There are travelers who are financially able to hire medical staff to assist with flying with disabled pax as well. This could even include donating miles. This has been a passion of mine. Even on my flight from DXB to MEM recently, I assisted a pax in IAD who needed assistance getting onto an RJ who was not able to ambulate on her own. While inflight, she told me how comfortable she felt that I was there to help her and how she wished that this type of service was available in every city and every country. She stated she would travel a whole lot more. And reading this thread has shown me it is truly needed. I think this would also make cabin crew and pilots feel more at ease as well.

If you have any suggestions or recommendations, please feel free to PM me.

To Chele
 

Chele,

You could always join the airlines Facebook page and I know as a Paramedic, if i saw a pax stating that he/she would be flying with someone disabled who would be on my same flight, I would offer to assist you during your travel. I am sure if a nurse, emt, Dr etc. were to read the same, they would as well. As you know, Continental is now UAL and I'm on their FB page. I travel international quite a bit and would be more than happy to assist if our paths ever cross.