Air travelers with disabilities hope for more accessible skies

When the Air Carrier Access Act was passed in 1986, it outlawed discrimination in air travel on the basis of disability.

But that doesn't mean passengers with disabilities have an easy time exercising their right to aviation. There is still a long way to go as the airline industry inches towards a more accessible travel experience, and on the way there are wins — and setbacks.

Earlier this month, Delta Air Lines and Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport opened a calming room for passengers traveling with children on the autism spectrum. A few days later, the U.S. Department of Transportation fined several airlines that failed to address complaints from travelers with disabilities. 

In Atlanta, Delta's calming room has several multi-sensory experiences meant to help calm children, like a ball pit and water sculpture. The room will help passengers "better acclimate to the air travel experience," according to Letty Ashworth, director of global diversity at Delta.

For disability advocates, the room is a great step — but only the beginning.

"I'd like to see whether they end up being accessible for autistic adult travelers, who also need accommodations," Sam Crane, director of public policy for the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, told Mashable. "I'd also want to know whether the space ends up itself becoming crowded or noisy, which may undermine its purpose. At the end of the day, what's going to matter the most is that there are spaces throughout the airport that offer a sort of haven from all the chaos."

In order to make travel truly accessible for autistic travelers, Crane said, staff need to be trained in autistic behaviors and willing to provide certain accommodations on request, like early boarding or separate security screening.

"In the future I hope we see more airlines and airports experimenting with ways to reduce the stress and sensory overload associated with airports and planes, either by creating sensory rooms or even by rethinking how the airport is designed," Crane said.

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Meanwhile, the Transportation Department fined Air France and Lufthansa $200,000, and British Airways $150,000, for their failure to "provide dispositive responses to passenger complaints," in disability-related cases.

“When air travelers file complaints with airlines, they deserve prompt and complete responses that appropriately answer their specific concerns,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said in a statement. “We will continue to take enforcement action when airlines violate our rules protecting the rights of passengers.”

But the blame doesn't lie solely with the airlines, according to Andrew Gurza, founder of Deliciously Disabled. Ground crew are often the ones that cause damage to equipment that passengers with disabilities rely on, like wheelchairs which must be transferred to cargo after a passenger boards.

"They take the chair away and when they’re putting it on a plane, they damage it," Gurza told Mashable. "They remove pieces that are not supposed to be removed. And when you take it up with the airlines, they don’t seem to understand the expense or the hardship that come when you have something that’s destroyed."

There are myriad ways for things to go wrong when traveling with a physical disability. But one thing is constant, according to Gurza: The airlines are reactive instead of proactive to disability complaints.

"They need a very particular training to show them the emotional impact of what they're doing."

"Everybody who is working with the airlines needs to have proper disability training," Gurza said. "They should meet with individuals who have been wronged by the airlines to see how they are inconvenienced. They need a very particular training to show them the emotional impact of what they're doing."

He suggested that airlines should start hiring people with disabilities as liaisons that can advise firsthand the problems that emerge and the best possible ways to prevent issues.

"Why should I expect that when I fly my equipment gets consistently damaged?" Gurza asked. "How am I supposed to be a full person with a career or even just go on vacation, have a life when they don’t care enough to respect my mobility?" 

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