Bill and Noreen Fertig

Non Existent Aisle Chair Assistance at DCA

Recently I flew from Norfolk, VA through LaGuardia and Chicago to Reno, NV and back through Chicago to Reagan National in DC (DCA). I live with a spinal cord injury and have traveled by air extensively. Mostly all gate agents and aisle chair assistants were responsive and fairly professional, until that is, I returned to DCA. Two assistants awaited me at DCA and neither made any attempt to assist. Both just stood there doing nothing outside the jetway near the gate desk. My son needed to take the aisle chair from them and get me off the plane as neither they nor their apparent supervisor did anything.

Next, my wife with a three-day-old severely fractured and surgically repaired (during our Westward trip) leg & ankle was bounced off of every third row of seats until reaching the front of the aircraft. Even the American Airlines air crew begged the supervisor (now taking over for the do-nothing assistants) to let my son help my wife off the plane as he had done for me. Nope, the ignorant supervisor then rammed my wife’s casted leg straight into the bulkhead.

No amount of on-site supervision (supervisor was even worse) could rectify this dilemma. These obviously unqualified assistants/supervisor should have never been hired to work with the public in the first place.