Written by Jeremy Muir – PDA’s CEO
For most people without disabilities, the process of simply flying from point A to point B is understood and, in the most part, goes as expected.
As an airline passenger, you pack your bags, arrive at the airport an exorbitant number of hours before your flight, fight your way through supposed ‘easy’ self-check-in’, drop bags, make intimate 60 second friendships with security, and if you have time, buy an overpriced coffee and wait to board your flying tube of necessary cosiness with a large number of people you have never met.
So why is this not a given for people living with a disability?
When you are a person flying with a disability, particularly a physical disability that requires use of a wheelchair or mobility device, all the above are the same – albeit usually with added road blocks in the process that make air travel cumbersome (at the very least), difficult or (at worst) nigh on impossible.
I am just one air traveller that uses a wheelchair, and I could share several ‘incidents’ that I have personally experienced when traveling over the years. However, the reality is that I could write a thesis of the number of times people with disabilities have been either overtly or covertly discriminated against whilst trying to access air travel.
On the weekend there was yet another incident where a person with a physical disability was subjected to unnecessary and unwarranted stress due to an airline’s inability to provide reasonable adjustments and demonstrated a severe lack of communication for the passenger. This lies at the hands of Qantas. The passenger in question had not experienced these issues prior, so why now, why the inconsistency in policy and approach? Why do we, as people with physical disabilities, have to keep asking these questions?
On March 28th, the ACCC gave the final go-ahead for the Virgin Australia, Qatar Airlines integrated alliance. This partnership between the two airlines will bring an added twenty eight weekly flights between Australia and Doha, with the promise of reduced airfares due to greater competition. Whilst this sounds fabulous for most Australians, people with a physical disability or those using a mobility device may be impacted by this joint initiative.
Qatar Airlines has an appalling record in its treatment of people with physical disabilities, with discrimination reported on at least a dozen occasions in the last 24 months. The latest involving a 12 year old boy living with cerebral palsy and his family who were denied travel due to the airline’s lack of disability training and protocols.
In today’s landscape of accessibility, occurrences of disability discrimination are illegal, unnecessary, avoidable and ultimately result in added costs to those discriminated against with little or no compensation.
With Virgin Australia possessing a better record in its protocols for those travelling with accessibility requirements, how will it ensure that its passengers flying with physical disability will not be discriminated against by Qatar Airlines? Have they addressed this issue with Qatar Airlines? Are they aware of the previous incidents of discrimination that have occurred? Will passengers travelling on Virgin have a relatively good experience, only to meet their connecting international flight with Qatar Airlines and encounter unwarranted and unwanted barriers to travel?
If and when I choose to travel internationally again, I would certainly not take these potential risks in travelling with Qatar Airlines. This doesn’t mean other international airlines are perfect when it comes to their policies, procedures and in-person treatment of people with physical disabilities (and let me tell you, their processes vary greatly), but it does mean that the in-person experience comes with a ‘tell us what you need, and we will try our best to accommodate’ approach.
Of further concern to people with physical disability, QANTAS has ordered twenty eight new A321XLR aircraft from Airbus to replace its existing Boeing 737 fleet – with the first plane arriving in June this year.
However, this model does not seem to address the accessibility requirements of passengers who require access into the cabin and their seats whilst remaining in their wheelchair. Whilst technology to do so now exists, why is this technology not mandatory for new aircraft? Why don’t aeroplane manufacturers make it mandatory for cabin design? Why is the airline industry nearly completely exempt from providing accessible transport when every other transport style around the world (trains, fast trains, very fast trains, ships, council buses, taxis – although not ride-sharing providers) have integrated the technology to do so?
Why is airline travel treated differently?
Surely if aircraft engineers have the capabilities to design, develop and build a plane that stays in the sky, it can incorporate a cabin design that accommodates wheelchairs.
One of recommendations from The Disability Royal Commission was to review the Disability Discrimination Act. This provides added incentive to enforce better access to airline travel for everyone – including those living with a physical disability.
The Australian Government’s 2024 Aviation White ‘Towards 2050’ skirts around the issues of truly accessible air travel for people with a disability, despite providing an extremely generous timeline of 25 years. One of the goals of the White Paper is to “Improve remedies for damage to wheelchairs and mobility devices.” Surely the best remedy for avoiding damage to wheelchairs is to provide wheelchair accessible cabins and cabin storage for mobility devices.
By 2050, I will be long departed from this mortal coil. To me, it seems inconceivable that it could take up to another 25 years before people with physical disabilities may be graced with discrimination free airline travel.
Optimistically, let us hope it does not take another 25 years before all people with disabilities can be free of discrimination in all aspects of life – whether in employment, education, transportation, or simply in life itself.
