Air Travel: Disabled Passengers

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Thursday 23rd November 2023 Grand Committee

Asked by

[Baroness Brinton]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of air travel for disabled passengers.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Fire Safety and Rescue Group. I thank the House of Lords Library for its helpful briefing, as well as Transport for All, Disability Rights UK and Rights on Flights for their continuous campaigning to improve the service that disabled people receive when trying to travel by air.

I emailed the group of disabled Peers prior to this debate and am grateful to those unable to attend today for their comments and to the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, for being here. Every single one of us has faced repeated problems, and our experience reflects that of the wider disabled community.

More than a decade ago, when I started using a wheelchair regularly, the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell of Surbiton, warned me that flying with a wheelchair was a fraught issue. A couple of days ago, she said to me:

“Until I gave up flying, I was regularly left on aeroplanes, sometimes for hours waiting for my power chair to be brought to the door of the plane. In the end I decided I simply couldn’t stand the stress anymore after my power chair was smashed by the bag handlers at Heathrow. I didn’t find out until we arrived in Canada and … was unable to use the chair independently (my husband had to push me everywhere) for the entire holiday. We could not find any repairers near enough to our location who stocked the part needed. I was not compensated and only after several complaining letters did I receive an apology”.


What has changed since then? Not a lot. Disabled passengers are still having to fight for their right to be able to use a plane, travel through an airport and rely on their wheelchairs and mobility equipment not being treated as baggage. Not only is failing to provide a safe service in breach of the UN charter for disabled people but it is legally discriminatory in the UK, the EU, the USA and many other countries. Worse, every glitch in the journey is emotionally exhausting. This is not like losing a suitcase. Damage to mobility aids can mean that you cannot get around in the country you are travelling to, and the level of payment, set internationally, when damage is done on the journey does not recompense for the actual cost of repairing the mobility aid or the hiring of an alternative, if that is even possible, as the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, told me.

The noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, told me that he avoids flying whenever he can, because he feels he is treated like cargo, not a customer. Disabled passengers have to sit around and wait: check into the airport at least an hour before everybody else and wait on the plane, and wait on the plane while one’s chair is, or more usually is not, brought from the hold. That reminds me of arriving at Mexico City Airport and waiting for my wheelchair to arrive in the baggage reclaim area. British Airways had put it in the special wheelchair container—I wish everybody used those—and through the glass window I watched staff remove it from that then try to put it on the moving conveyor belt. Unsurprisingly, it got stuck because the chair was larger than the hole it was going through. It fell off the conveyer was damaged. That was not a good start to being a UNICEF visitor followed by an international conference.

The noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, told us that it is the practice that we need to change, rather than just keeping stepping up enforcement, because enforcement is not working. Too many airlines send out messages that disabled people are just not welcome. He says that changing practice would ensure a win-win because smooth journeys mean an end to horror stories and a better reputation for the airline and service providers in the airport, even though it is only the airline that has responsibility under 1107/2006.

The noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, told our group that he has been left on planes twice this year when ground staff forgot about him. On one occasion the pilot took him off the plane and even through passport control. The pressure for that, by the way, is that the new captain and crew for the next flight cannot come on board until the last passenger leaves. There is no comparable pressure on ground staff. The noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, also talked about the ridiculous process we have to fill in for our wheelchair dimensions and battery details when booking the flight, then again when the airline confirms the booking, then again when you check in online to get your seat, then again when you arrive at check-in and again when you arrive at the departure gate.

My experience of three flights this year has forced me to reconsider whether I should fly at all. In May I flew from Gatwick to Stockholm with Norwegian. All forms were repeatedly filled in, and Gatwick and Norwegian accepted my lightweight travel chair with two lithium batteries, carried into the cabin by ground staff for safety as per IATA guidance. After my conference I returned to Arlanda Airport. I got through check-in, again repeating battery details, but when I got to the plane the ground staff told me that the pilot had refused to allow the lithium batteries to be brought into the cabin because under IATA rules they cannot be in the hold. I asked to see the pilot, showed him my outward ticket from Gatwick and said, “But your colleague flew me out”. At that point he said, “Well, on this one occasion you can fly, but not again”. Thank goodness I had flown out with the same airline.

In September I flew Wizz Air from Luton to Vilnius for the day to speak at another international conference. I checked in to be told that my lithium batteries were now too big. They were not, according to the IATA chart, but the ground services manager refused to come to talk to me directly, so I had to leave my chair at Luton and fly without it. I was in considerable pain, and not just for that one day.

In October I flew Wizz Air from Bucharest to Luton after speaking at another international conference, this time about the barriers that disabled people face. This time I took my regular dry cell battery wheelchair—this one—to avoid the row about lithium batteries. The ground services manager in Bucharest had got his battery types muddled and would let me on the plane only if I personally carried them both into the cabin. These batteries are old-fashioned bus batteries. They are bigger than old-fashioned car batteries. I cannot lift even one of them easily, and under IATA guidance they are designed to remain in situ in the hold with the electrics immobilised. He refused to allow me on the flight. It cost me €900 to fly back with British Airways as there was only one seat available over the next 48 hours. Worse, the Wizz Air complaints system does not work for this type of problem because the flight was not delayed or cancelled. The CAA has now kindly put me in touch with a senior Wizz Air manager, but I was in despair for seven hours at Bucharest Airport that day.

Here is the problem. The current systems allow too many tiers of staff to make ill-informed decisions that muddle up different regulations and different types of batteries. In my role as vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Fire Safety and Rescue Group I recognise the importance of keeping batteries safe and getting it right. IATA has two sets of guidance: the Battery-Powered Wheelchair and Mobility Aid Guidance Document and the Dangerous Goods Regulations, which sits with the International Civil Aviation Organization’s Technical Instructions for the Safe Transport of Dangerous Goods by Air. The latter, the DGR, is related to commercial freight and differs entirely from the Battery-Powered Wheelchair and Mobility Aid Guidance Document, but it is not clear.

My first question to the Minister is: when will there be one clear international flowchart with one set of common data relating to wheelchairs and mobility aids and one standard for service for disabled passengers? There is much confusion about what is or is not included, and I fear that is often an underlying problem when things go so wrong. There are moves for a universally accepted wheelchair passport, which would help, but it must be recognised by all the airlines, not left to the whim of checking staff or even the pilot.

There must also be a standard for training staff and for ensuring that disabled people are not handed on from person to person. On one journey at Madrid airport, I was handled by four different people before I could get to my own chair. At one point, I was literally just dumped in front of a concrete wall airside and told to wait for the next person to arrive; I was on my own for nearly 15 minutes.

There are plenty of talking shops. I have sometimes been invited to the industry/departmental meetings convened by the noble Baroness, Lady Vere, in the past, as have other Peers, and it is good that disabled people and organisations are involved, but until there are real changes nothing will change. The examples that I have given today are repeated every day when disabled people travel. Everyone is horrified when they hear what has happened, but there is no urgency to solve it. The noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, said that if non-disabled people received this level of service it would simply be deemed unacceptable. Personally, I think there would be riots.

My last question to the Minister is: how can this Government get all the parties together to change what is happening? I do not mean just in the UK. This is a global problem that can be solved only by Governments, regulators and airlines coming together. It can and must be improved so that disabled people can travel and live their lives like everyone else.