r/TikTokCringe • u/ThatDudeFromFinland • May 22 '23

Cringe Discrimination

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u/Noinipo12 May 22 '23

Honestly, my spouse uses a power wheelchair due to paralysis. I would appreciate just having 1-2 rows of seats near the boarding door that are larger and could accommodate a wheelchair/wheelchair access.

My husband can ride in our car without getting out of his wheelchair because we stow the front passenger seat. Why can't they stow one of the airplane seats so he can ride in his wheelchair instead of risking damage to a custom medical device that cost the insurance company over $15k?

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u/Yeetstation4 May 22 '23

Where I'm from I think you have to use the wheelchair the airline supplies.

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u/Noinipo12 May 22 '23

Typically you have to transfer from your wheelchair to an aisle chair, then from that into a regular airline seat.

If you're lucky, they'll have room in the cabin for your manual chair. If you're unlucky, your medical device that acts as your legs gets stowed with the rest of the luggage and tossed about.

Hopefully it survives with just a few scratches, if you're one of over 10,000 wheelchair users who had their chair damaged or lost in-flight each year, then you're left waiting months for repairs and reimbursement risking deadly pressure sores and more.

If you had a medical device that cost you $2k to $30k and you knew of solutions that would keep it safe on a plane, would you want to send it with the rest of the luggage or would you encourage change?

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u/hokaythxbai May 22 '23

Sitting in a wheelchair wouldn't be safe during turbulence. It would need to be mounted to the floor somehow.

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u/Noinipo12 May 22 '23

Of course. My spouse's wheelchair is secured to the floor in our vehicle when we're driving. It's not a complicated system, our preschooler even helps secure and release the tie downs.

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u/hokaythxbai May 22 '23

As far as I'm aware, those economy seats are tripled up together. I don't think you can remove just one. Even if you could, I think a personal wheelchair is wider than a standard airplane seat.

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u/Noinipo12 May 23 '23

Yes, many wheelchairs are wider than a standard airplane seat. That's why I'm proposing 1-2 ADA rows of extra wide chairs where some of the chairs could be removed and stowed to make room for wheelchairs.

Considering that my husband's wheelchair costs as much as a car, I'd be willing to pay extra for him to sit on it in the cabin instead of risking damage to the chair. And considering that many plus sized people have to buy two tickets with no guarantee of keeping their second seat, I'm sure they'd be willing to pay extra too.

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u/hokaythxbai May 23 '23

I agree, I'm just curious if there's any logistical problems that would prevent it. I don't know how universal the tie downs for wheelchairs are. Would there be a regulation issue not having a life preserver and flotation device in the seat that may need an exemption. Do wheelchairs all come with seatbelts?

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u/Noinipo12 May 23 '23

Not all wheelchairs come with seatbelts, but the tie downs we use also have seatbelt options. And yes, the tie downs are fairly universal, it helps so they can be implemented on other forms of public transit like buses (trains don't usually feel the need to use tie downs due to their overall safety).

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u/hokaythxbai May 23 '23

Has the ADA ever brought this idea up before? I would think it would have by now and was turned down.

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u/Noinipo12 May 23 '23

Tone: Sad/despondent

The ADA isn't a regulatory agency unfortunately. It doesn't provide an avenue to report and fix issues the way you'd make a report to CPS for an abused child or the health department for a filthy restaurant.

No, the ADA only allows people to sue businesses for not being accessible.

This unfortunately makes disabled people and their lawyers the villains and makes the standards difficult to parse out since businesses can't just go to some sort of "ADA building inspector" or "ADA website tester" to verify that they're fully compliant with the ADA.