On July 20th, Julianna’s (delayed) Delta flight landed in Atlanta at 7:30pm, with a connecting flight scheduled for 8:05pm. Julianna, who has muscular dystrophy, missed the connecting flight because nobody came with a wheelchair until 8:05—the same time the connecting flight took off. To make matters worse, the plane crew told Julianna she might make the flight anyway if she stopped waiting for help and got off the plane right now, so she crawled down the stairs on her own. When the wheelchair came she was “wheeled into a back room and advised” that her plane had taken off. But that was just the first half of her ordeal, and the next eight hours only got worse.
The employees in this room were debating who would get me to the ticket gate to be re-ticketed because it was no one’s job and the appropriate personnel were not responding to their calls. After that was resolved I was given a new boarding pass for a flight expected to leave at 12:55 AM. Then this person advised me she cannot get me from a D Gate to Gate A9. She again called for the appropriate personnel who never showed. We waited by an elevator for someone she convinced to bring me over to Gate A even though it was not his job. I had to beg him to stop at a bathroom entrance and to wait for me and then he finally delivered me to Gate A9.
I was given a meal voucher for my INCONVENIENCE but could not purchase any food because again there was no one to bring me to an eating establishment, never mind wait on the long line for me to make a food purchase.
At 11:15 I advised the gate attendant I was dehydrated and cramping because I could not purchase any water. This is the only nice employee that treated me with dignity. The flight I was transferred to was supposed to leave at 10:22 PM but was delayed until 1:30 AM. This gate attendant went and brought me water off of the plane.
This gate attendant also made sure she finally found some one at 11:15 PM to push me to obtain food and another bathroom break. I arrived in West Palm Beach at 3:15 AM with no ride and had to again crawl into the shuttle service to get home.
I understand plane delays and waiting at airports, but is this how you treat your handicapped passengers???
The text above is from a letter Julianna has sent to Richard Anderson, Delta’s CEO, who we hope will do more than send her another food voucher—like take real steps to make sure handicapped passengers are treated with a minimum of respect when they’re traveling.
(Thanks to Chris)
(Photo: Andrei Dimofte)
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@Aladdyn: Yes, they do. Airlines require wheelchair-bound passengers to ship their chairs through in luggage. Then special chairs that fit down the plane aisle are used to transport passengers. My aunt, a paraplegic who travels frequently, once had her wheelchair lost by the airline on a flight from Iowa to Seattle. It turned up 6 months later in Kansas City. True story.
I find it hard to belive that someone dragged themselves from the gate to the curb without anyone causing a stir.
@KeilwerthLA: After reading some of the insane stuff here that turned out to be true this is unfortunately too easy to believe.
There’s also that problem of the more people that are around the less likely it is that someone will help. (Although from her story it sounds like the other passengers would have already left by the time she crawled out the plane.)
I think this says a lot about the corporate culture within Delta Air Lines. It’s hard to picture employees in a place like Target being this callous.
The employees involved in this that refused to aid this woman should all be fired. They are not just crappy employees, they are crappy excuses for humans. You don’t just walk away from someone who obviously is in real need, even if your boss told you to go do something else or it isn’t in your job description. Not to mention there are laws that outline that the airlines have to assist people to get to their other flight. Since people are forced to check their assistive devices it is the airlines boo to help them.
This woman may have been in a situation where she can not move herself in a non-motorized wheelchair due to her condition. Just leaving her abandoned and flat out refusing to help someone in need is inexcusable.
I hope this woman takes every available legal action against Delta for this.
This is almost too evil to be true. I wonder if there’s another side to this story.
Some details just don’t make sense. As a couple people pointed out, how was she able to crawl from the gate to ground transportation without anyone noticing and how did she get home after getting off the shuttle?
I honestly hope it didn’t go down as she described. It’s just too horrifying to believe.
There’s a little ol’ thing called the ACAA, which is essentially the airlines’ version of the ADA. Both it and the DOT regulate how disabled people are treated/handled by airlines. If this story’s true and legitimate, Delta would be wise to quickly settle this before it went to the DOT–it’s a finable offence. Somewhere in the $20,000s as I recall from former Conflict Resolution training at a now defunct airline (pick one!).
Word to the wise, she should have demanded to speak with either a manager or call corporate if these people were to ignorant to know what they were doing. Station-level personnel have been known to pass over the finer points of policy and regulations. That’s why there’s Corporate.
@KeilwerthLA: I have known a few people with conditions like MD. Some of them can get around if they hang on to things and kind of drag themselves a bit to get around. But it is far more akin to crawling than to walking, certainly not an efficient or easy way to get around.
@SigmundTheSeaMonster: This is why they play the “it’s not my job, card”. Liability. It’s better to do nothing than the wrong thing.
@SigmundTheSeaMonster: I agree, sue them in to oblivion, and the unhelpful employees should be fired.
I can believe it as well. I had to go on a business trip a few months after major surgery, and I needed a wheelchair at Heathrow airport. British Airways put several of us who needed wheelchairs in a side corridor and made some of us, fortunately not me, miss connecting flights (one couple missed a flight to Tel Aviv that was not going to refly until the next day). Even the employees apologized for the crappy service.
By the way, the method they used for getting a wheelchair rider into the plane is by using a special truck that raises to airplane door height and lowers to a ground level ramp.
@Aladdyn: WTF? Are you serious, or do I need to sound the “Troll in the dungeon!” alarm?
@KeilwerthLA: I wondered as well about how much was hyperbole, but considering a recent trip through a few airports, I’m inclined to believe the exaggeration, if any, may only be slight.
I mean, I don’t know the specifics of the OPs disease/disorder, but if one can crawl, I’d imagine one can wheel onesself over to a food place for some food, for example, and did not have to just remain immobile where the OP was parked by the rude attendant. However, what was basically lacking was the OP getting a wheelchair and being assisted into the wheelchair and moved to their destination in the first place, and any exaggeration, if any, was used to further the point that these people were rude bastards. Like I said, I don’t specifically know what the disorder is like for this individual.
@taney71: Oh my gosh, I know this is going to sound CRAZY to you, but handicapped people don’t all need minders, and some of them are very capable of taking care of most of their basic needs with minimal assistance that is required to be provided to them. It’s not like the OP is a child!
@Scuba Steve: Without knowing *WHY* they weren’t responding (such as they were already helping someone, or maybe they were out of the area on a break, etc.)? Really? You know, human compassion isn’t just reserved for the handicapped and Consumerist readers. Have some compassion for the usually overworked and underpaid skycaps. If anyone should be fired, it’s those that said “it’s not my job. I called the people who are supposed to do this.” and did nothing else.
UGH, i can’t believe i’m sticking up for Delta at all. I’m not. How they acted was reprehensible.
BUT…
How could she book a flight with only a 35 minute connection? I’ve always been told you need minimum 40 minutes. Plus, you’re almost guaranteed to miss your connection with even that much time, when you’re able bodied. The fact that she thought she might make this connection under the best of circumstances is laughable.
That said, everything that followed was sickening.
I wish I could doubt her story, but I can’t. I’ve had Multiple Sclerosis for eight years. Although I’m mobile, traveling is exhausting for me, and I can’t walk fast enough to make connections, even with my cane, so I have to rely on wheelchairs.
I have had a similar experience on several occasions, even though we tell the airline when we book the flight that I need wheelchair assistance to make the connection (I always make a point of checking with the person at the gate when I check in to make sure that they have that noted). One time when I finally gave up and started making my way towards the next gate, an employee from another airline or the airport was going by with an empty wheelchair and took care of me.
Being in a wheelchair can be really dehumanizing to begin with. Some airline employees have been lovely, and others have treated me as though I were a huge inconvenience instead of a passenger who is paying to make it from point A to point B and by law is supposed to be accommodated.
You can be sure that I won’t be taking a chance on Delta.
@Treved: She didn’t book a flight with a 35 minute connection. The post clearly states her first flight was delayed.
@Treved: If you read carefully, she only had 35 minutes because her flight getting into Atlanta was delayed. It was originally scheduled to leave more time for the connection.
@taney71: She might not have anybody. With this logic, since she flew alone, she should be basically dehumanized and forced to crawl down a plane and into the airport… That’s ridiculous. No human decency in this story at all.
@KeilwerthLA: …to clarify, this is not to say that I think it’s impossible that this is exaggerated but it isn’t difficult to believe either.
@bohemian: Depends, I assume, on how bad her MD is and what specific disease she has (“muscular dystrophy” encompasses quite a few things that are technically different diseases). But yeah, it’s entirely possible that both her arms and legs are affected severely enough that she can’t walk or wheel herself unassisted on an unpowered wheelchair.
My heart goes out to her. There is absolutely NO reason for this to happen, and it never fails to amaze me when people see somebody needing help, they become totally devoid of any form of compassion.
That said – I learned the hard way not to ever depend on airlines to “help” you if you have a disability. I’m deaf, and used to request the help of the employees at a given gate to ensure that I was notified when my plane began boarding, as I am unable to hear the announcements, and you CAN’T trust the flight board, as often the information is wrong or hasn’t been updated yet. Once I missed a plane because gates were changed but I was never notified. I almost missed another because they forgot which flight I was waiting for (there were three gates in the waiting area, but none had any signage indicating which flight was being boarded.) I’ve taken to befriending somebody in the waiting room who is on the same flight as I am and asking them if they would mind notifying me when the boarding calls begin. I’ve never had a problem, and have even made some friendships that way. Its sad that I have to use a service KNOWING that they will not accommodate me and to make other arrangements to ensure I actually catch my flights.
@Neecy: That really sucks – air travel is bad enough without that sort of hassle to deal with. Yeah, we all know the airlines can’t be depended upon to do what they promise to do. But in this case I’m not sure what else she could have done to help herself, since the airline presumably took away her wheelchair and she had to rely on them to be able to get off the plane. I have absolutely no clue why some airline employee couldn’t take 2 minutes of their time to at least help her off the plane. There is no way they are busy with anything so important that they can’t take two minutes to do that.
This story does not surprise me in the slightest.
Airline requests for assistance by the disabled are treated about as importantly as your request for a vegetarian meal – that is, not very well prioritized.
And as the airlines have declined in quality, this problem has reached epidemic levels as shown by this story.
@Aladdyn: Read the comment code – it’s on the front page right now, even! We don’t allow posts that only serve to blame the victim for their misfortune.
Posting helpful comments is fine, but it does not sound like you know enough about the situation to be helpful.
Most of the wheelchair crew I see at the airports I use frequently are from a contract company, not the airlines. I would guess that from the door of the plane onwards, the airlines are not responsible for – and possibly not even allowed to – provide in-airport wheelchair transport. Last Christmas I was flying out of Seattle on a small plane from one of the satellite terminals and we were delayed for 45 minutes because on the plane that we were supposed to be leaving on there was a guy who needed wheelchair assistance and it took that long for the airport wheelchair company to send someone out. It was completely ridiculous – the gate crew were livid and were calling every 5 minutes but we were all stuck waiting. I felt so bad for the guy sitting all alone on the plane with the flight crew, nobody able to do anything for him. At least I think they treated him OK.
@jenjen: Well, if these contract companies are not doing a competent job, the airlines need to end their contracts and bring the job back in-house. Outsourcing is no excuse, but I can see how it could lead to further problems with coordination.
What happened to human decency? My God, who the hell have we become that another person has to beg to get a little help? I’m just discussed!
Oh. Man.
This is one of the saddest, most inhumane accounts I’ve heard in 2008 about airline service atrocities. I left a jacket in an airport in Japan by mistake and it was hand delivered by courier to me on the other end of the country the next day. And here in US and A we can’t find one generous (or even human) soul to help push a wheelchair to another terminal because “it’s not their job?”
America is starting to sound more and more third world – the inability to cope with simple situations requiring only a shred of compassion and common sense is baffling.
I’ve only seen this kind of behavior from USAirways personally, though it makes me wonder about the industry as a whole – my grandma is blind and has some mobility issues stemming from sciatica and a bad back. For these reasons, when booking a flight, she requests wheelchair service to transport her from her gate to the arrivals area where someone will be waiting for her. My home airport has a little indoor car with a driver who usually transports older people who are still mobile enough to climb in across terminals, but my grandmother can’t do that.
Last time she visited, I got admitted to the gates by telling the ticketing agents I had to pick up a blind passenger who was uncomfortable waiting at the gate for help without a relative. When she arrived, a skycap delivered the wheelchair after about fifteen minutes but refused to push her all the way to the baggage claim, because there was one of those car pickups nearby and he insisted she use it. I watched her explain her inability to board it and he wouldn’t drop the idea. At this point, I got irritated, took the wheelchair from him, and told him I’d push it. Apparently this was against some kind of liability policy, but I argued my case and won, and he gave me very strict instructions about where to drop it off when I was done. I hate to think what would have happened there if I hadn’t made them admit me to the gates.
@forgottenpassword: understaffed and overworked? sure, but they apparently had time to wait around complaining that no one brought a wheelchair and debating who would. if you have time to stand there, you have time to go and get the wheelchair yourself.
i’ve seen wheelchairs sitting ate the gates just waiting as spares in every airport i’ve been in (and that’s quite a few). there’s no excuse for this. i’m sure at least one flight attendant or someone from the home crew in delta KNEW where in that airport there were wheelchairs. i’m sure they could’ve even stopped one of the security guys usually wandering around on golf carts to give this woman a ride. hell i’ve gotten a ride and all i had were crutches, not muscular dystrophy.
there really is no excuse for this and it is the airline’s fault.
My wife is a paraplegic. Before we met she was flying on a regional prop plane from a small airport to Houston. The ground crew seemed very put out out to bring the lift. One told another well within my wife’s earshot “Lazy, its just a couple of steps!”. This was on Continental’s regional carrier.
@KeilwerthLA: “I find it hard to belive that someone dragged themselves from the gate to the curb without anyone causing a stir.”
I fell down an entire flight of stairs and more than 200 people went by conscientiously avoiding looking at me so they didn’t have to help. After recovering my senses (my brains being well and truly rattled by such a fall), I had to drag myself to get help, this being a pre-cell-phone era. And, no, I could not walk after the fall.
Fortunately far more common has been the situation where I tripped or slipped and half a dozen people came to help me up and see if I was okay. But, yeah, sometimes people friggin’ suck.
“I was given a meal voucher for my INCONVENIENCE but could not purchase any food because again there was no one to bring me to an eating establishment”
Once she had the wheelchair, and the voucher, why didn’t she wheel on over to the food court? I really don’t see how it would be the airline’s responsibility to push her around.
If I were a Delta employee and came across this situation, there is not
doubt in my mind that I would personally assist her, even it meant carrying
her on my back, to the gate. Anyone who thinks otherwise is non-human and
deserves pain.
Not as bad as Kitty Genovese – but, again, just shows how much people are heartless bastards. The problem is those people are more afraid to lose their jobs for not being where they are “supposed to be” than to help someone out who is in need.
This is what happens when we focus on the “bottom line” rather than “human dignity”. This type of stuff happens all of the time – I know very few people who will go out of their way for someone else. Then again, I know that when I have, about two out of three times I am given a curt “No Thank you” or a lecture on “do you think I look like a gimp?” … Always nice to know how appreciated help is.
However, I was slightly confused by one detail in the story (my apologies for nitpicking, but I am literally confused and trying to figure it out still):
“I was given a new boarding pass for a flight expected to leave at 12:55 AM.”
“The flight I was transferred to was supposed to leave at 10:22 PM but was delayed until 1:30 AM.”
They transferred your flight twice, to a separate time because they could not move you around quick enough?
Thanks!
@Eyebrows McGee: a 70 year old man was hit by a car in hartford, ct and people just stood there doing nothing.
people DO NOT CARE about the stranger. women got taught to scream “fire” instead of “rape” because no one would help them. people ignore domestic disputes even when there’s screaming. people ignore someone hitting a child in public. people ignore someone bleeding and laying on the ground.
@Clold: muscular dystrophy causes motor skill problems similar to advanced parkinson’s disease. the chances are that she had the actual strength to wheel herself, since she didn’t have the strength and/or coordination to walk, are pretty slim. and before you say something about her being able to crawl, there’s a very large difference in what it takes to crawl vs what it takes to walk, for evidence look at babies.
she wouldn’t have needed the meal voucher if they had just sucked it up and had someone go and get the wheelchair to take her to her connecting flight. they made her ability to get a meal into their problem.
@Clold: She didn’t have a broken leg, she has MD. Chances are that she can’t push a non-motorized wheelchair herself.
No, the airline did not have a legal responsibility to get her food for her. But hey, here’s an idea! How about one of the employees actually doing something that is not their responsibility to aid a customer who can’t easily do it themselves, especially since she wouldn’t have been sitting there waiting if they hadn’t screwed up?
As America ages we’ll see this type of situation more and more. Airlines had better get their act together or they’re going to get hit with a hell of a lot of lawsuits.
if i was a passenger on this flight and had seen/heard this going on i would have helped her myself
this is just insane, i cannot believe people would treat someone like this, its really just sad
@katylostherart: Technically, several people did call for help right when it happened, as far as I recall. Could be wrong, though.
i should be able to dig this
whoops i’m a lame brain.
whoops i’m a lame brain
It’s possible that all the other passengers had already exited the plane, especially if she was waiting for half an hour for a wheelchair to arrive.
@katylostherart: It is called the Bystander Effect and it is a shame. People don’t intervene. My first thought was “Where are all the other passengers? Watching eating their bag of Cheetos?” Regular people need to start stepping up and helping others. This is a sad commentary on our society when she could not find one person to wheel her over to the food court. I wonder how many people were already on the way to it?
Must be nice to be able to say “It isn’t my job.” That will not work in alot of workplaces. Many are cross-trained in a variety of jobs and it is their job. Welcome to the 21st Century Workplace!
The people that push the wheelchairs at airports are NOT employed by the airlines, but by companies contracted by the airport. The contract company is who the complaint letter should be written to.
Delta lost another customer here. My understanding is that they’ve been near the bottom of the barrel performance-wise for some years.
@forgottenpassword: I’ve been in these situations too. I’d choose to take the hit and do the right thing even if it meant a boss chewing me out later on – down the road, that person being mistreated could be my elderly dad, or a sick friend, or me. Also, I like to think it’s part and parcel of being a human being.
No excuse for this, or the other examples given (such as the woman whose paraplegic condition was described as “lazy”).
Reminds me of this story – Reverend Kenneth Davis had a stroke in an Florida airport last year. He was apparently left outside for two days without anyone doing anything. – [www2.ljworld.com]
I think this is evidence that our society has become more narcissistic … and since self-absorption and self-pity doesn’t make anyone happy, more and more of us are taking it out on each other, including by ignoring basic common sense and decency.
@maztec: Police were called during that horrid attack.
[en.wikipedia.org]
I stopped flying several years ago and will never set foot onto a commercial airline again.
I feel bad for this Gal as I have a friend that is disabled and he was treated pretty much the same way as her. All I can say is, in the future DO NOT fly alone! You can’t depend on anyone at the Airport for anything. If you were shot and laying on the floor, they’d either let you bleed out, or call the cops over who will then Tazer you for not complying with there orders to get up. People with any sort of medical condition should never fly alone.
If I was an airline employee, and I knew/assumed there would be some sort of disciplinary risk to help a person, once they started CRAWLING, I would say, “Screw this, I am helping this person, I don’t care what happens!” How those people sat there and watched that lady on her hands and knees is beyond my comprehension. I would also help to avoid a legal situation as well. People need to be trained to diffuse situations at the lowest level possible, not let it escalate, unless it’s beyond their power. I have worked in the customer service industry all my life and I constantly do things that are “not my job”, but I do it out of pride and willingness to help people. It’s not difficult and I find that being resourceful and helpful makes me feel good, too.
@jcf70816: Disagree. Delta contracted with the wheelchair company, and it’s Delta’s responsibility to make sure they do their job. It’s not the public’s job to understand or care about Delta’s internal business arrangements. Plus, I’m sure the contract company fears pissing off Delta a lot more than they fear a member of the public.
I suspect that this is one of those interface problems, and that she fell in the gap between the airport’s assistance and the airline’s. Which completely shouldn’t happen, but it’s a big weak spot in the machinery. I am wondering about the stairs, a little–is it possible that it was a jetway and not stairs and that the paraphrase misphrased? It doesn’t make a huge difference in the end; I’m just curious.
I think neecy has the best advice for similar situations: to try to get some help from another passenger. Ideally, it’d be somebody you’ve had a chance to scope out a bit before trusting them at this level of vulnerability, but there are a lot of helpful people in the world, and people often have extra time on layovers that they’d be happy to be generous with. This wouldn’t have gotten her off the plane, and I’m not sure if she was ever close enough in a gate area to actually talk to another passenger, unfortunately, but if she’d connected with a seatmate she might have been able to have somebody advocating for her at the gate while she was stuck waiting on the plane, at least.