Welcome!

Would you believe it’s currently illegal to sit in a wheelchair on an airplane while it’s flying?

Not only for commercial flights, but even if you own the plane. You can pay millions of dollars to buy your own jet, but you still can’t sit in your wheelchair during the flight.

Why?

Because the Federal Aviation Administration says your wheelchair is unsafe. It hasn’t been crash tested. It’s a ridiculous position, but sadly, it’s the law.

If you want to fly, someone has to lift you out of your chair and put you in a tiny metal seat called an “aisle chair.” The airline staff then wheels you to your seat, and you have to be lifted again over top of the armrest (most airplane armrests don’t raise) and into a regular airline seat.

It’s extremely dangerous for everyone.

Not only it does the passenger have to be lifted a total of four times (twice entering, twice exiting), but the person doing the lifting also has to work inside the confines of the aircraft. If it’s a small plane, there’s nowhere to put your feet, and you can’t even stand upright, and yet you have to lift someone’s full body weight.

Oh, and most of the airline employees who offer to assist you have had no training on the proper way to lift someone. They frequently injure the passenger or themselves.

And if you want to bring a friend or family member to assist you, rather than relying on untrained strangers?

You have to pay for an extra ticket. No discounts, either.

While you’re being lifted, the airline staff will also push you to go as quickly as possible. They are on a tight schedule, and every minute costs the airline money. If you take too long, they might have other passengers start boarding the plane before you’re even settled, forcing you to go through the routine with an audience.

Worst-case scenario?

You pay for multiple tickets for yourself and your caregivers, one of you gets injured during the transfer, and you have an entire aircraft of people watching while the airline calls an ambulance. It happens dozens of times every year.

And if the danger and humiliation of it all isn’t enough, you also have to worry about your wheelchair. As soon as you are transferred into the aisle chair, the baggage handlers grab your wheelchair and throw it on top of the baggage. It rolls around underneath the plane during the flight.

What happens if your wheelchair is damaged?

If you’re lucky, the airline will apologize and pay for the damages. Nevermind that you now have no wheelchair on your trip while the repairs are being made.

If you’re unlucky, an apathetic baggage handler will just shrug at you and go on their way. Not their problem.

All in all, it’s a nightmare. Such a nightmare, in fact, that most travelers in wheelchairs refuse to fly. They might go their entire lives without leaving their hometown, not because they prefer to stay at home, not because they can’t afford a ticket, but because the danger and humiliation simply isn’t worth it.

The good news?

It’s a completely fixable problem. By introducing new technology and making small tweaks to airport and airline policy, we can make air travel safe and dignified for travelers in wheelchairs.

It won’t cost much money. It won’t require any changes to the airplanes themselves.

For us to solve the problem, we need only one thing:

Awareness.

The Airline Accessibility Association was founded for the purpose of educating consumers, airports, and airlines about easy, inexpensive changes we can implement to make commercial aircraft more accessible. Once everyone is aware of how big the problem is and how easy it is to solve, we can fix it worldwide in just a few months.

If you’d like to support us, please sign our petition below. We will periodically email you when we have important news to share.