Posted on 10/26/2015 9:34:14 AM PDT by Responsibility2nd
Story Highlights
D'Arcee Neal, who has cerebral palsy, took a five-hour flight last week
A mix-up meant there was no wheelchair to help him off the plane; he was told to wait for one
He waited but finally crawled out of the plane with no assistance
(CNN)—A man returning from a meeting about disabled accessibility policies arrived home with a very personal example of the problem.
D'Arcee Neal, who has cerebral palsy, took a five-hour flight from San Francisco to Washington last week. A mix-up at the gate meant there was no wheelchair to help the 29-year-old off the plane, so he was told to wait for one to be found.
The problem was Neal needed to use the restroom. His disability made it too difficult to use the one on the plane. He had already waited more than 15 minutes for the rest of the passengers to disembark, and the wait for an aisle chair -- a narrow, specialized wheelchair to take disabled passengers down the airplane aisle -- had now lasted another 15 minutes.
~snip~
After the incident, he said, he simply went home.
"I didn't contact United at all, because I honestly didn't believe they cared," he said.
As it turns out, Neal said, one of the flight attendants later felt sorry about the incident and reported it to the company. A United representative called Neal the day after the flight to apologize.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Outrageous.
Would it have been so hard for the crew to enlist the aid of a couple of luggage handlers or security guys to assist the man? Oh...wait; they got a UNION...they don’t do stuff like that!
United’s management is currently outsourcing all the ground service functions and if actual experienced employees want to stay, they have to take a $2/hr pay cut along with benefits reductions.
The result looks like this. The contract employees typically are third world immigrants who would have a hard time passing a SIDA clearance background check if it weren’t for the fact that they come from countries where there are no records.
Fly the friendly skies. If you dare.
“Outrageous.”
Absolutely.
Once upon a time I almost got fired for moving computer equipment from one side of a building to the other.
True story.
But by all means let’s consolidate the airline industry even more. /s
“Poor guy.”
Classy Guy actually.... treated poorly.
We had to wait 4 hours one time for a union guy to show up and move a truck 15 feet so we could access a door. When I offered to move it I was told I would be fired and possibly sued if I did. He made 3.5 hours of OT that day for 1 minute of actual work.
I will never fly again, never.
Yes, I was surprised to read that HE wasn’t the one to complain, call the media, blast away on Facebook, and so on.
The baggage handlers are not upstairs on the jetway unless required and the security people would absolutely not do something like that. There are contract assisted movement people who have to be called for liability reasons at all major airports - especially SFO and IAD.
The IAM contract doesn’t prohibit GSA’s from helping the contract people, but the contractor itself would.
The issue here is that the contractor did not respond in time, probably because they were stretched thin that day.
Which is typically due to underbidding the contract to get it.
Now if he’d only paid the additional $125 to upgrade his seat to “ADA Certified Assisted Exiting” then this wouldn’t have happened.
The only thing that saved my bacon was I was young, female and a new hire from another part of the country. I cried. Saved my job.
I’d already waited two WEEKS for them to move my computer to the new work area for my group. They’d ‘forgotten’ it (and a bunch of other stuff besides) when they moved ‘everything’ the first time. I’d gotten tired of walking back and forth across a corporate ‘cubeland’ warehouse every time I needed to use my computer.
Terrible. Completely unacceptable.
I was too. In this victimhood society where everyone sues anyone it was a shock this guy chose to take the high road.
Oh, and the icing on the cake. The guy who was SUPPOSED to move my computer still billed for moving it. It was the ‘plea deal’ of some sort corporate did with the union for my misdeed. Union wanted me fired on the spot. Guy billed 4 hrs for moving 1 computer and a printer across a building. It had taken me a whole 10m to do it.
I will never fly on UA / Continental again.
There was a glimmer of hope, as they got a new President.
Then he suffered a heart attack.
No joke.
Thanks for the info. Now United is dead to me.
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