Come fly with me...

Apologies for the long absence.  I have had speaking engagements, a concussion, 2 suicide attempts and an appraisal to deal with.  I shall try to betterise.

I am one of those people you stare it in airport queues in jealousy.  Nay not for my good looks or enormous genitals but because i have a silver frequent flier card which zooms me past queues.  I earned this by flying far too much between London and Zürich on BA.

I also, particularly these days, get zoomed because I am in a wheelchair much of the time.

Most airlines will offer wheelchair assistance of one kind or another.  In fact they buy it from the airports and the airports subcontract it from companies and the companies hire the staff.  Just the kind of arrangement that Mrs Thatcher put into the NHS and which turned our hospitals into the vibrant infective MRSA plague zones we know and love.  Because in this model no-one, and i mean no-one is responsible for anything.

The first point to ponder is this: airports are not big investors in wheelchair stocks.  The chairs are crap.  I have become something of a wheelchair fancier of late and i can say the best loaner wheelchairs I have found are the ones used by the Science Museum in London.  Seriously awesome things.  The worst ones are the rebadged shopping trolleys dredged out of a canal and operated in London City Airport.  Being wheeled around in those has caused me pain and injury before and generally now I will try to use my own chair when possible.

It is not just the injury risk.  lets say you turn up to an airport and ask for assistance from the check in on ( never do this).  It will take up to an hour to turn up.  They will then take you straight to the gate.  you will not get a chance to shop or do anything else because you are an unworthy cripple and should know your place.  Even should they turn up on time you will be in a transport chair not a self propelled chair so you cant move it anyway.  And often they will dump you then disappear off with the chair anyway.  I once spent 2 hrs marooned in a seat in the BA lounge in Tokyo Narita because this happened.  The service is overused and understaffed and customer wishes are way down the list.

London City Airport takes this a little further.  They have just revamped their terminal building.  For those who do not know it City is a small airport but very good for European flights.  It has a couple of shops and cafes and it has just upscaled the facilities with money from Bloomberg.  Bloomberg should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves for the result.  What they have done is ceate a facility that is impossible to access if you are chairbound.  It is one of the worst pieces of discriminatory developement I have ever seen and the company should be pilloried until they revise it.  Essentially you can access everything on legs but they have positioned chairs, tables etc so that wheelchairs are excluded from use of the restaurant, tables block access to the disabled loo, charging sockets have seats in front of them etc etc.  If one person had used it one time in a chair during design it would not have gone ahead,  but there you go.

City is not alone.  Heathrow Terminal 5 is a similar disgrace in places.  Ok the open thoroughfares are alright but the terminal staff selectively use disabled loos even when no queue is in the normal ones and get shirty when challenged.  The South lounge is full of nice comfy chairs etc but these are arranged in order to ensure cripples cant mix with real people.  Service counters have items arranged at the back out of reach.  The customer support staff talk down to you like nobodies business and have little grasp of reality.  One of them, sitting right next to a tannoy mike seriously wanted to indicate where I would be sitting for 5 hrs so she could see me.  The idea that I might want to roll around a bit and that she could use the Magic Talking Stick to find me was very alien.

But lets say that you make it to the gate on time...  What should happen is that you pre-board along with the other priority passengers.  This means they let you through early and then wheel you down.  You then take a seat on the empty plane.  Why do you go in first?  Well two reasons, firstly disabled people often have hand baggage that they really need mid flight such as meds, walking sticks, pillows etc.  If you get on with everyone else the stowage space gets full quickly.  If I cannot reach my walking stick mid flight I am a danger to myself and others and may very well piss in my seat, out of revenge if not need.  The other reason is about dignity.  would you like to hobble slowly down the aisle with 150 people you do not know all staring at you wondering why you are delaying them?

On Saturday that is exactly what the woman on duty at gate A22 terminal 5 on the 1305 to Zürich wanted me to do.  Simply because she could not be bothered to fill in a luggage form ( the lack of which was BA's fault incidentally) she wanted me to wait until after boarding and hobble onto a packed plane as a free freakshow for the masses.  I did manage to express my displeasure without actually telling her to get fucked but the get fucked was clearly implied.

Now pre-boarding is also offered to small children in pushchairs etc.  We all trundle down the ramp leaving our chariots at the bottom next to the plane door.  My chariot is known as Davros and I am considering fitting Boudicca style blades.  Now BA gives you an orange tag to attach to such things which tells the baggage pixies to return it to the plane door at your destination.  People on American Airlines would know this as Valet bag service.  My experience is that pushchairs automatically get this service.  But for wheelchairs you have to fight very very hard.  In Dallas Fort Worth on Friday last I had a flight which was delayed, then had its boarding moved up without announcement.  I got to the gate as preboarders were being lined up and asked the very artificial blonde lady for my wheelchair to return to the plane door.
She said "you mean the baggage carousel".
I said no, I meant the plane door.
"Its better if you reclaim it afterwards"
Better for who?  Give me the orange tags please
"these are for pushchairs"
No, they have a picture of both wheelchairs and pushchairs on.  furthermore it is BA policy that this is my right.  Also this flight will be very much more delayed because no-one is getting on till you comply with my reasonable request.
"I will have to ask my supervisor if we can do that"

Eventually she complied.  because she had to.  I was damned certain I would see her sacked if she didnt.  But this is how check-in staff bully you into things.  needless to say staff in Narita are worse- they attach the tag but then wrap the entire chair in bubble wrap, tie string around it and put it in the wrong hold so only the pilot can find it 1 hr after landing.

American airlines twice did an assistance fail this weekend.  At San Antonio the terminal is rather taller than an MD80.  So when the plane attaches itself the TerminalPenis has to slope downwards.  Now slopes are a nightmare in a chair.  My arms are pretty strong but fairly gentle inclines are tricky.  It took me 10 minutes to explain to the gatemonkey that although it was a ramp I needed someone to push me down or i was quite likely to splat at high speed into the side of the plane.

I may write up the whole journey in another post but before i go this time heres a final BA fail.  I have a medicalert tag, and I generally start a long haul flight by telling the service crew where it is and also asking them to wake me before bringing any trolleys through.  this is because if my muscles are relaxed a blow from a trolley can dislocate all my joints.  Fairly simple conversation, huh?  Here is my tag, Please wake me before trolleys.
When i said this to the lady on the 1745 Fort Worth to Heathrow i got in order "should you be sitting there?" ( yes i need to move around so an aisle is sadly necessary) "I dont see how we can help" and, my favourite "Well you shouldnt be flying then, are you sure you have medical clearance?".

Just one of those bigotted interactions that makes life so much better.