By eliminating the guesswork from the booking process, fliers who use wheelchairs can travel more confidently. “I think that this new booking tool will undoubtedly make the travel experience easier for wheelchair users,” says Cory Lee, who runs the travel site Curb Free With Cory Lee. “It will be much more convenient to know if my wheelchair will fit in the cargo hold when I’m beginning the trip planning process. I really hope that other airlines will do the same thing in the near future.”
After high-profile incidents of expensive damage to wheelchairs across the entire industry, many airlines no longer accept wheelchairs unless they easily fit in the cargo hold. Not knowing whether a wheelchair will be accepted on board a plane can lead some travelers to stay home. “I use a motorized wheelchair that weighs about 400 pounds, and it is quite bulky, so this is a frequent problem that I encounter,” Lee says. “I have been turned away from flights multiple times due to my wheelchair not being able to fit in the cargo hold, and it’s something that I constantly worry about when I need to fly on smaller planes. The uncertainty has kept me from traveling to certain places.”
Kerper says that in the past, the issue has left some passengers stranded, ruining their vacations. “This tool is a big step in avoiding this problem,” she says. “It needs to be implemented by all airlines.”
United is also taking other steps to enhance the process for passengers with wheelchairs, like starting a six-month pilot program at Houston’s Intercontinental airport that will test new services in the event a wheelchair does become damaged or delayed, like offering specialized seating at the airport and reimbursing transportation costs if the customer wants to wait for their chair somewhere outside the airport.
The airline has also begun providing ramp agents with new mobile technology that alerts them to the fact that a wheelchair will be on the flight so they can prepare to load it in the hold.
Still, travelers say airlines could go farther, especially when it comes to educating staff. “I wish that airlines would better train their employees on how to transfer wheelchair users onboard and how to load wheelchairs,” Lee says. “As a frequent flier, I have met a lot of airline employees that simply didn’t have any real training. I would love for airlines to hire actual wheelchair users to come in and speak about why it’s important to care for mobility devices.” Hearing directly from wheelchair users would create more empathy, according to Lee.
Kerper agrees: “Employees need to understand that a wheelchair is not a piece of equipment, it is a person’s legs.”
