Julian Herzog (CC BY 4.0)
Before the squatter who is preparing to reoccupy the White House returns in January, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) has some unfinished business.
Back in March, the department released a proposed rule “to address the serious problems that individuals with disabilities using wheelchairs and scooters face when traveling by air.”
Flying on a commercial airline can be a real nightmare if you use a wheelchair. You have to get out of your chair and go sit in your seat on the plane while the baggage haulers take your wheelchair away and put it in the cargo bin of the plane, where they put all the checked luggage. And when you arrive at your destination and are reunited with your wheelchair, you may very well discover that it has been broken somewhere along the way and no longer works.
According to the DOT, airline companies reported mishandling more than 11,000 passenger wheelchairs and scooters in 2022. The new rule proposes that when a passenger’s mobility device is mishandled by airline personnel, the airline must immediately notify the passenger of his or her rights to “file a claim with the airline,” “receive a loaner wheelchair from the airline with certain customizations,” and “choose a preferred vendor, if desired, for repairs or replacement of a damaged device.”
Several disability advocacy organizations such as the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD) lauded the proposal. “For far too long, passengers with disabilities have been subject to personal injuries, loss of dignity, and loss of freedom and mobility due to broken or damaged wheelchairs and other mobility devices,” AAPD Vice President of Policy Michael Lewis said in February. “These proposed standards for the training of airline employees and airport contractors will go a long way in reducing injuries to both passengers as well as airline and contractor employees, provide passengers with a loaner wheelchair when theirs is broken or damaged during flight, and allow people with disabilities who use wheelchairs or other mobility devices to fly safely and with dignity.”
The rule proposes other good things, too, that would likely make the prospect of flying a lot less dreadful for disabled folks. But the deadline for submitting public comments passed months ago and the department still hasn’t released a finalized version. And it certainly is reasonable to worry that when the squatter’s people take over the DOT and everything else on Inauguration Day, any efforts to improve airline experiences for disabled folks will come to a screeching halt.
The proposed rule isn’t the only promising change that the DOT has introduced under the Biden Administration. Wheelchairs get trashed when we who need them relinquish them to airline personnel—the only reason we give them up is because the aircrafts aren’t wheelchair accessible. The only way to significantly cut down on the amount of damage airline companies inflict upon the wheelchairs of their passengers is to design planes that make it possible for people like us to remain in our wheelchairs while flying.
The DOT confirmed earlier this year that, in collaboration with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Delta Air Lines, concepts for in-cabin adaptive wheelchair seats were working their way through the approvals process. Delta Air Lines has already created and submitted to the FAA a prototype for wheelchair accessible seating on an aircraft and, according to the DOT, the FAA “expects to determine the feasibility of wheelchairs on aircraft by the end of 2025.”
It will be up to the squatter’s people at the DOT to keep all of this moving forward. But so far the squatter has done nothing to indicate that he knows the slightest bit about or gives the slightest damn about the issues that matter most to Americans with disabilities. And he seems bent on sabotaging anything he doesn’t understand or care about.