Daniel Lesley

Airline Travel

I am a Disabled Veteran and I have had Multiple Sclerosis for 25 years. I have traveled by plane to Ft Worth, Texas twice a year to visit my Mother and Sister. The flight from my home in Illinois takes an hour and a half. I find airline travel for the disabled to be a very difficult task. Although the airline crew is very helpful, I find the procedure that they use to board a disabled wheelchair bound person a task to be looked into. Not only is it very uncomfortable to transfer from your wheelchair to the very small transfer seat, It is a very tight squeeze while you are being pushed and pulled down the aisle with all the belts and buckles they have strapped you down with to the small transfer seat. Now you will have to transfer from the little transfer seat to you’re assigned seat for the flight. All of this is done first before the other passengers can board the plane. Then when the plane lands you are the last one off.

On my final flight to see my Mother before she died, I had problems during the security check. I put my watch, wallet, glasses etc into a plastic tub and then the security agent proceeded to wipe down my wheelchair with their magic cloth. Then the security agent said that his security test may have shown that I might have explosive powder on my wheelchair. I live on a farm, hard telling what I have on my chair. At this point they wheeled me into a small security room for further testing. They wiped down my chair again and found nothing.That took another 30 minutes. Once security released me, the guy pushing me in my wheelchair had to get my things from the tub, grab my bag, and get me to my flight on time.