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 ...
OK, United didn’t have a wheel-chair available. Stuff happens - no big deal.
BUT the stupidity is - why didn’t anyone simply announce to the passengers, to the staff, to the ground crew.
“I have a disabled passenger who needs to disembark, but we don’t have a chair. Could I request 3-4 volunteers to aid us in bringing him to the terminal?”
I assure you there would have been more than enough people immediately offer themselves to help.
THAT’s the stupidity of the whole thing Why? Either no one thought to ask, or they were afraid of liability in the case, which is then our government’s fault.
Typical United Airlines service. The company is so bad that the new CEO looked around, saw all the problems and after 37 days on the job faked a heart attack to get out of the company.
Between the DHLS and the airlines themselves anyone that flies must be into S&M. Cattle being loaded into a cattle car get better treatment.
I actually have grown tired of listening to peoples complaints about it; it’s not like its something new! It’s been like this for years now and it isn’t changing anytime soon.
So it you fly and get poor treatment or even outlandish treatment like this guy stop complaining you knew there was a good chance of something like this happening to you before you even brought your ticket.
Not too long ago, I was doing a trade show at a convention center where my company had a booth and you know what that means, scores of pinky-ring wearing plug-uglies needed to be hired to do every little thing at ridiculous wages.
So at this convention center, there were two freight elevators at either end of the building to move gear up to the convention floor from the loading docks. So a team of union guys have our equipment moved to the freight elevator only to find out it is out of order.
Now you would think the logical thing to do would be to have everything moved down the hallway to the other freight elevator that was working. But that would be too simple.
The union guys just stood there and shrugged. Their job was done as far as they were concerned and they would need to get a work order if they were going to move everything (that was on wheels) down the hallway to the other elevator. I mean, I could have done this myself in about 10 minutes. But I wasn't allowed.
Meanwhile, the guy that was paid to run the elevator was just standing there. More on him later.
Finally, after a bunch of phone calls and learning that the elevator would likely not get fixed that day (it was on a Saturday), we were able to get the necessary paperwork and permissions to have the equipment moved to the other elevator. After everything is finally moved there, no elevator operator. Apparently he was at lunch or on break or something.
So I asked if we could just have the elevator operator from down the hallway - you know, the one that was standing by a broken elevator doing absolutely nothing - come on down the hallway and get us on our way. That seems logical, right?
"Oh no, no, no" I was told, "That is simply not allowed. That man was hired to run only THAT elevator and not THIS elevator."
So ludicrous as this sounds, we had to wait about a half hour for the other elevator guy to come shuffling back from wherever he was, and I do mean he was shuffling, while the other elevator guy was standing in front of a broken elevator down the hallway. Mind you that if I was by myself, I could have hit the button to call the elevator, pushed everything inside, gone to my floor and pushed it out inside of about 90 seconds tops.
True story and just another example of how labor unions have helped to strangle this economy. I have no doubt that such nonsense was behind this guy having to crawl off a plane. There were probably only certain people allowed by the union to move around a wheelchair.
Also because someone with bad intentions can sue them
“ow my back, you carried me wrong. I’m calling my lawyer!”
Javits.
“afraid of liability”.
Those three little words says it all.
FTA.... “After being told repeatedly to wait, Neal said, he couldn’t any longer. He said he got out of his seat and as the flight attendants watched, he crawled his way up the aisle and to the gangway, where a wheelchair was then ready.
“I expected them to ask to assist me, but they just stared,” he said.”
My guess is that they were all too scared to offer assistance. What if they dropped him? They could be fired, sued, maybe even charged.
Stand up Chuck! JB
Stand up Chuck! JB
Stand up Chuck! JB
Stand up Chuck! JB
AAh flying. Where else can you go to be treated like cattle, frisked like a terrorist and pay an exorbitant price for it. Just love ti!
he had just returned from a conference on handicapped access? sounds suspicious.
A family member is a United pilot and he is very religious and the most caring person I have ever known. If he had been one of the pilots and saw that man, I am positive he would have carried that man off the plane and gotten him to a restroom.
This pilot was at our house a few weeks ago, and saw I had seat covers for the front seat of my car. He insisted on taking the front seats out of my car and did a professional job of getting those covers on so they look like they came on the car. He didn’t have to do that but he didn’t want us at our age to do that. We couldn’t have taken the seats out like he did.
This is only one example of his caring for other people. I know he would have helped that man off the plane.
United’s fault no matter how you spin it.
“sounds suspicious.”
Not really. Read the article. HE’s not the one who made an issue of this.
Can you imagine? A victim and a real “protected class” individual who is “entitled” but didn’t scream and shout about it?
What is the world coming to?
United covering their @ss according to the law and the rules of our highly litigious society. They asked the man to wait - he didn't want to wait. If they picked him up to help him, they could have been sued for millions.
We had to hire a union carpenter in Chicago at McCormick Place (one hour minimum) to assist in setting up our show booth. Prefap pop-up modular thing. The old guy with a claw hammer didn’t have a clue. We found him a chair and he sat and watched us set up the display.
TRUE STORY:
My new bride and I were scheduled to “fly the friendly skies” departing at 7:30am for Hawaii. Upon checking in our baggage we were told the pilots/crew “over-slept” and the next flight would be four hours later.
We had one scheduled plane change and that turned into two which made us lose a whole day off of our honeymoon.
We didn’t get squat from them, even with the Latin Drama my wife gave. We’ll never fly them ever again and I hope they eventually go belly up soon.
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