Recently American Airlines has said that will be banning power wheelchairs on their flights because of their weight; certain planes the weight limit for the chairs is 300 pounds and others it is 400 pounds. I have seen discrimination before and this is by far one of the most disgusting for of discrimination that I have seen. It is 2020, and the disabled community is still one of the most discriminated against communities. The world is not made for people with disabilities.
This ban is a disgusting display of abelism. An airline is not going to come out and say “we are banning white people,” or “we are banning black people” or why is it okay that they are essentially banning an entire community. There are some people that solely rely on power chairs every single day of their life, and they do not have another way of getting around or being independent. The way I look at it with the so called excuse of weight limit, what is the difference between saying that they are banning power chairs and them banning fat people who weight over 300 or 400 pounds. (and I am not trying to say that they should do that instead, I am not trying to say anything bad about fat people at all, or over weight people, whatever term they prefer to call themselves.)
The flying experience is already a traumatic enough experience for anyone with an type of disability. From personal experience it can be a very violating experience, personally my spine is fused for T2 to L3 and obviously it shows up on the body scan during the security check. The last time that I went through airport security I ad to be completely pat down my entire torso because of this. Charlie uses his manual chair at the airport, mind you that the two of us have not flown anywhere together yet, but from what he has told me, he gets pat down on every part of his body, and his AFO braces get swabbed down.
Airlines are also not always equipped to handle power chairs to begin with, I have heard horror stories by people that I follow online. Their chairs get destroyed and broken or pieces go missing. Also people that rely solely on their power chairs, already need to be out of their chair and they need to sit in the plane chairs which can be extremely uncomfortable and sometimes impossible for them without the use of pillows or even adaptive seats such as children’s car seats.
I have been beyond disgusted and angered by American Airlines an this ban. It really shows how disabled people rank in the world. Whether you want to believe it or not, there is systematic ranking of people in the world, we all know that straight white able bodied men are on the top of that ranking and it goes on from their. The disabled community is one of the most marginalized communities because of the way some people look at them, there are people that look at disabled people and just see them as a burden and nothing more than that. But this is a whole other topic that I can definitely get into on another day.
M
Just interabled Things 