Airline Passengers with Disabilities Bill of Rights

This is a good, not-so-good, and ugly review of the recently released Airline Passengers with Disabilities Bill of Rights.

All opinions are my own.

First of all, it is great that we (i.e., people with disabilities and their caregivers) finally have a government document we can point to and scream "YOU CAN'T DO THAT" when we are being mistreated on the basis of our disabilities.

My biggest concerns fall into these categories:

• Racial and gender stereotypes in the graphics. The following fundamental issues should never have made it past even the most cursory sensitivity review.

1. all service providers are women;
2. the individual with the darkest skin appears to be a woman pushing a white male-appearing person's wheelchair and;
3. The people with more luggage (i.e., those "well off" financially) are all white.

• No comprehensive reporting of Bill of Rights violation complaints. The quarterly wheelchair damage report gives you an excellent idea of who is doing inclusion well and who needs work.
• No sanctions when complaints are found to be valid. I make a complaint. The complaint is found to be valid. What is stopping the airline from doing the same thing to someone else? Without penalties, treatment will not improve, and this Bill of Rights effectively devolves into a wishlist that no one is held accountable to..

While the language around the document claims that there is nothing new or expanded in the Department of Transportation's position on behavior surrounding disabled passengers, there are some key takeaways:

The Right to Be Treated with Dignity and Respect

This one is a "motherhood and apple pie" lead-in. Of course, I (a wheelchair user with an insulin pump, glaucoma, and hearing aids) have the right to be treated with dignity and respect. We all do. But if I had a nickel for every time an airline employee eye-rolled me, I would fly free for a while. Is that a violation of my dignity and respect? I think it is, but I doubt it is actionable unless caught on camera. Some of the things I've experienced (like a flight attendant to didn't speak English trying to yank my insulin pump off my body forcibly) would violate this rule today. Since I travel by myself frequently, I need at least one hand (sometimes both) for my wheelchair and luggage. Unfortunately, the chances of me having footage of someone not treating me with dignity and respect are pretty low.

The Right to Receive Information About Services and Aircraft Capabilities and Limitations

Again, good, but it is WAY too common for airlines to swap out equipment at the last minute, whether for equipment failures or to reposition equipment after storms or labor / COVID disruptions. So the information is only as good as any last-minute disruptions that may derail your travel plans.

 The Right to Receive Information in an Accessible Format

Regarding digital accessibility of .PDF files, airlines are generally pretty good at this already.PDF files stored online are easy to scan automatically. When online .PDF files are found to be not accessible, those website owners sometimes become the victim of a drive-by digital accessibility litigator. This right calls out things I haven't seen very often, like braille evacuation cards.

The Right to Accessible Airport Facilities

The first line of this right is the kiss of death "Airlines and U.S. airport operators are both responsible for the accessibility of airport facilities." The amount of finger-pointing created by that joint liability creates a grand canyon of inaccessibility. Also, the fact that there might be a single accessible bathroom or charging station in a particular airport terminal is meaningless when it is occupied by someone who is not disabled.

The Right to Assistance at Airports

The critical language in this one is "prompt and timely enplaning and deplaning assistance," which is later identified as 30 minutes in a device if you have a mobility disability. Here are a couple of examples from my last two flights:

• Yesterday, I flew into Denver. When I got off the plane, as almost the last passenger because I had to wait for them for my wheelchair, not a single wheelchair pusher had yet shown up for the other disabled people from my flight who did not own personal chairs.
• Last month in LAX, I was threatened with arrest for not getting off a plane when my device had not yet been delivered, and they were covering it up by pushing in new luggage for the next flight.

Both of those events were more than 30 minutes. Despite leaving LOADS of time, people with disabilities constantly miss flights because of slow or non-existent airport wheelchair services and sighted assistance for blind people traveling alone. And this is another area where significant finger pointing exists - the airlines ALWAYS say it is the subcontractors' fault; I've never heard an airline employee say "my bad," ever. I have flown upwards of 50X per year in non-Pandemic years.

The Right to Assistance on the Aircraft

This one is pretty straightforward. Honestly, there should be a corollary: the passenger has the right to refuse assistance and be left alone. Helicopter staff standing two feet behind me to ensure I don't fall when I've told them I don't need help do not help me in any way, nor are they treating me in a dignified manner. But here's the most important takeaway point for this one:

airlines must never hand-carry a passenger (directly pick up a passenger’s body in the arms of airline personnel) on or off an aircraft, except in an emergency.

The Right to Travel with an Assistive Device or Service Animal

Assistive devices must not count against the passenger’s carry-on limit

Could someone please put this on a post-it note on every check-in terminal on the planet?

Priority in-cabin stowage must be available for any aircraft with 100 or more passenger seats.

OMG, I've heard story after story of some entitled first-class passenger's wedding clothing or some flight attendant wanting to make a quick exit taking up all the space and suddenly, whoops, no room for a wheelchair. Priority means the wheelchair comes first. Everyone else takes a back seat. No questions asked, and certainly NOT first come, first served.

Should an airline lose, damage, or destroy the wheelchair or other assistive device, the airline must provide compensation in an amount up to the original purchase price of the wheelchair or device

As someone who has had their wheelchair damaged four times in the past four years (once to the point where it was non-functional), this does not go NEARLY far enough. Each time an airline damages my chair, I spend hours on the phone and driving to and from repair shops. That time (and interim rental costs) should be compensated as well.

Airlines cannot deny the transportation of a service dog if there are means that would mitigate the problem.

Airlines view pets as cash-generators. They want everyone coughing up those carrier and cargo fees. Between that and the controversy around emotional support animals, it is good to get a clear "what you are allowed to do, and what you are NOT allowed to do" breakdown of service animal rules.

The Right to Receive Seating Accommodations

This is pretty clear-cut. In my experience, discrimination in this area hasn't happened to me too often? My one complaint is that general boarding frequently follows pre-boarding by five seconds, if that.

The entire point of pre-boarding is to give people with disabilities TIME to get on SAFELY.

Having some privileged first-class passenger breathing down my neck (which has happened more than once) is not conducive to me having an equal, dignified experience.

I would like to see a minimum amount of time established by pre-boarding and that general boarding cannot commence until every person with a disability is in their seat or some set number of minutes has elapsed since pre-boarding was announced.

The Right to Accessible Aircraft Features

This one is a bit repetitive of some of the earlier guarantees and discusses movable aisle armrests, priority stowage space, accessible lavatories, and onboard wheelchairs.

How much would you travel if you had to wear adult diapers or catheterize yourself before getting on the plane?

Wheelchair users are forced to do that ALL THE FREAKING TIME.

The Right to Resolution of a Disability-Related Issue

This right talks about Complaint Resolution Offices and filing complaints with the DOT. At least the DOTs complaint form is accessible. This right has no teeth in it because there are no reports of sanctions for upheld complaints.

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The Airline Passengers with Disabilities Bill of Rights is a start, but it is only that. It codifies things that were of serious concern previously such as neurodiverse passengers being thrown off of flights and flights not having aisle chairs or accessible bathrooms.

However, before it becomes something I will cheer for, they need to clean up the intersectional bias that permeates the imagery,