Posted on 04/30/2019 3:00:08 PM PDT by Morgana
FULL TITLE: 'I had to crawl': Amputee seeks damages after United Airlines and airport security seize scooter batteries
Stearn Hodge says he will never forget the humiliation of having to drag his body across a hotel room floor during what was supposed to be a vacation celebrating his 43rd wedding anniversary because a security agent at the Calgary International Airport and United Airlines confiscated the batteries he needed to operate a portable scooter.
"Having to crawl across the floor in front of my wife is the most humiliating thing that I can think of," said Hodge. "It unmasks how real my disability is I haven't been the same since."
The 68-year-old retired contractor from Kelowna, B.C., lost his left arm and right leg in a 1984 workplace accident. He now relies on a portable scooter powered by lithium batteries.
But on a trip to Tulsa, Okla., on Feb. 26, 2017, an agent with the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA) and a United Airlines official told Hodge to remove the $2,000 battery from his scooter and fly without it, as well as his spare battery.
In making the demand, both employees cited safety concerns.
(Excerpt) Read more at cbc.ca ...
Put him on a blankie and push him across the floor. I can see it now ...
Don’t bother - the message is in: the guy is a weak snowflake who should be made to crawl in his wife’s presence 100 times to prove he’s a real man!!! Or so some dumb freepers said...
“”It unmasks how real my disability is””
I don’t even know what that is supposed to mean.
“”United Airlines and the Hotel he stayed at could not provide an old fashion wheel chair? really?””
I wondered the same thing and then reading further he said that he can’t operate a wheelchair with one arm and his wife couldn’t push one because she has health problems. I’ll buy that - my husband has a portable wheelchair we can put in the car and I can push it if it’s on hardwood floors in doctor’s offices etc., but not if it’s on carpet. We old ladies are tough but we do suffer our own infirmities which doesn’t allow us to be of much help in situations like that.
Cool!
“Here’s your ticket, babykiller” - what the United agent said to me as he handed me my boarding pass in the San Francisco airport as I passed through on the way back from military assignment overseas in 1966 - I despise that airline.....
Agreed.
It’s something we, as FReepers, are usually against.
What dramatics.
After my head injury I can’t say what my wife had to do.
I’m much better. I’m not embarrassed by how she had to see me and she doesn’t care.
And it CERTAINLY didn’t change me or my life forever.
And it was a LOT MORE than this one episode.
This ISNT about his disability. It sucks. To say the least.
This is about procedure at the airport and we don’t know the details.
Just a tabloid line about how his life is changed forever.
LOL
Your insensitive conservative side is showing.
EVERY liberal knows what it means :)
Exactly!
I’m hanging my head in shame.....but I still don’t know what it means.
ROFL!!!
Me neither :)
You have just earned the applause button.
Key is we DONT know the details.
We have many here ASSuming e.g., that he has acceptable batteries because he carried rules with him. Did he actually read the rules? Was there a detail that stated there IS a limit to the power level (what is a small Li battery, anyway)?
And what does IATA actually regulate? Do they have any power over Canadian rules? Cannot Canada go further than IATA and not allow this? Maybe IATA is MINIMAL standards?
Great post.
Liberals respond by crying for “justice”, which means a big payout.
We are supposed to be different and go by facts.
Mea culpa.
Note to self - read the whole article.
They should’ve loaned him a manual chair. An airport once sent my chair to the wrong city. After a bit of discussion, we managed to wrangle a loaner from them. After they retrieved my chair the next day, they brought it to me and took theirs back. Btw, I never fly with a powerchair. Don’t trust the airline people to keep track of it.
Also, every scooter and powerchair I’ve ever used has levers on the drive wheels to put them in freewheeling mode. Then your wife or traveling companion can push you. A hassle, but better than crawling on the floor.
Airports and hotels are usually pretty good about accommodating wheelchair users. They’ve provided people to push my wife and I through airports when we needed help, helped us with our luggage, and into taxis, etc, and the hotel people would help us to our rooms (when we needed them). We usually travel with one or two companions.
By reading the article it appears the guy is right and security
was wrong but that is no suprise considering it is Canada, while
most Canadians I know are good folks the police state minded
people in those type of jobs are worse than the ones in the us if
posible.
And the dumbest bastards in the world.
Well, thank you!
“Per the FAA any lithium battery for mobility purposes larger than 300 Watt Hours is not in compliance. If your mobility scooter or power wheelchair contains lithium ion batteries, you may want to consider buying a set of non-spillable lead acid batteries as a backup just in case.”
“Right, the fact that he had printouts of the regulations permitting batteries with airline permission, and airline permission proves that he was the one who was uninformed.”
“Airline permission” is ultimately up to the captain. If the captain says no exceptions, it doesn’t ride. Period...
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