United Airlines majorly botches disability policy

http://evilpuppy.livejournal.com/365126.html

Give that a read. Apparently a disabled woman, who happens to be a popular LiveJournal blogger, had an incredibly terrible experience on a United Airlines flight. You won't even believe the ridiculousness. I know almost everyone hates at least one aspect of flying. If it had been me going through what this girl went through, I would have sobbed.

Basically, in summary, this girl repeatedly had to wait for a wheelchair, which almost caused her to miss the flight because they kept giving them to people that were elderly and they didn't believe she was disabled (bc she's young, doesn't appear disadvantaged, etc... has some sort of spinal injury aka the worst). She finally gets one and is taken to the flight ramp, where she asks the woman at the check-in to make sure there is a note to have a wheelchair waiting for her upon arrival. She is assured that there will be one waiting for her.

Then once she finally gets on board, she asks a flight attendant to help her load her carry-on luggage into the overhead compartment. Then this happens (from the girl's letter and blog post)....

"If I helped everyone do that all day then MY back would be killing me by the end of the day!" I asked her how I was supposed to get my luggage stowed and her answer was: "You'll just have to wait for someone from your row to come back here and ask them to give you a hand." When I asked what would happen if no one would, her response to me was: "Well, normally a passenger is around to overhear something like this and they'll offer to help with it on their own. You'll just have to ask someone when they get back here." Then she turned back around and went up to the front seats where she waited to "assist" other passengers.

So then she finally gets a passenger to help her load it--a passenger who is not PAID to ASSIST, mind you--into the overhead compartment. The same kind man helps her unload once the flight lands. She gets off the ramp to find, what? You guessed it. No chair waiting for her. More than a half hour later, she still has no wheelchair to take her through the terminal. She opts to approach a customer service desk once she DOES get one... and this happens (oh, it gets worse, courtesy of Dina the customer service agent)..

Dina the customer service agent's response to girl's complaints: "I won't apologize for her actions and I'm not sorry for what happened to you. It's not in our contract to assist passengers with their luggage and we reserve the right to refuse assistance to anyone. If that's what you need, then perhaps in the future, you should make other travel arrangements."

Oh, wait. It gets better. Somehow, some way.

Things went downhill from there because I pointed out that being disabled, I required assistance and Dina said that I obviously should have asked the person pushing the wheelchair for me to come on and load my luggage. She even turned to the woman pushing me now and asked her if she'd every followed a passenger on board to assist them with luggage. The woman pushing me flat out said: "No, that's the stewardess' job." That seemed to take the wind out of Dina for a moment, but she recovered quickly and repeated again that she wasn't sorry for what happened to me.

This time, however, she added: "It's not actionable. She won't even get a slap on the wrist, so there's no recourse for you in this situation." I was getting more and more upset with every word she said and I asked her if that meant it really was company policy to depend on their other passengers to provide assistance to the disabled. Dina's answer was: "Normally another passenger will step in and help, yes. If you have troubles, you really should ask them." I was unaware that it was company policy to depend on complete strangers who are in no way affiliated with United to provide my disability assistance while I'm on your airline.

So after all of this went down, this blog post/letter circulated Facebook, Twitter and the blogosphere... and finally someone made a tweet @UnitedAirlines on Twitter, and they had this to say in response:

@UnitedAirlines responds on Twitter: This is concerning. We're looking into this matter.

Oh, of course you are, United Airlines. By the way, the reason all of this happened (not a good or acceptable reason) is that flight attendants don't get worker's comp if they injure themselves by helping someone else with luggage. AKA there is clearly some interior fury going on at the airlines, and some worker rage... which led to passive aggressive rage against passengers who really, REALLY need the help.

Part of the reason the Airline responded was because good old Kevin Smith's name was dropped. Remember him? He was essentially discriminated against over at Southwest Airlines.

Since the info and letter have circulated, and United Airlines PR got a chance to get up to speed, these two Tweets were also made by United Airlines:

UnitedAirlines: What the customer describes is unacceptable. We are working to reach her to offer apology, & identifying the employees involved.

and...

UnitedAirlines: We take serving customers with disabilities very seriously. Trying to contact the customer to apologize & resolve. Thank you for feedback.

Ah yes, sweet sweet public relations. I hope this girl goes all the way. Apparently she is sending the letter to the American Disabilities Association (they'll have a field day), as well as Aviation Consumer Protection and Enforcement.

So you think your flight was bad? Think again.