This Guardian article (24 July 2026) brought back many memories of experiences I’ve had flying as a disabled person.
It’s 2026, for fuck’s sake.
I’ve been flying as a disabled person since I was six years old.
USA, Canada, France, Russia, the UK – the instruction for disabled people to wait til the end is always the same. The putative reason is that apparently, disabled people take longer to get out of the plane than everyone else, so they don’t cause a blockage in disembarkation. The instruction fails to note that not all disabled people are the same. We are treated as a monolithic inconvenience.
People fail to notice that any blockage is caused by everyone else standing up to retrieve their carry-on luggage, often before the seat-belt sign is turned off. I’ve never bothered to do that, since at 4’11”, I’m too short to reach the overhead bins. My husband, who is 6’4″, handles that.
They don’t care if we can move as fast as anyone else or not – which I can, by the way. So if the plane is on fire, or ditching, we’re just left to burn to death, or drown.
Nice. Very eugenical.
In August 2000, I flew from Canada to Paris for a two-week vacation touring France. My mobility scooter was irreparably damaged by NorthWest Airlines. I was forced to walk with my stick, unprepared, for my entire trip.
Despite my anger, I was determined to enjoy France amidst the huge shock of not having my mobility device available for my trip. We loaded the broken scooter into the truck of our rented Citroen and got on with it.
We had a great time, I got to use my French skills, and I took ten rolls of film.
NorthWest Airline never compensated us for the damage.
When I went to Russia in June 2003 for two weeks, I decided not to take my mobility scooter, and it turned out to be the right decision. On that wonderful trip, I took seventeen rolls of film. Aeroflot treated us just like all the other passengers.
Airline treatment of disabled passengers has not improved in twenty-six years. Talking about my experiences with TSA would require a separate blog post.
