BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (WBRC) – Traveling can be challenging for everyone, but for people with disabilities it can be even more challenging. A Blount County man living with ALS says a recent mishap involving his wheelchair has him wanting more accountability from airlines around the way they handle disabled passengers.
Charles Cloud says he doesn’t have much time left to live, which is why he doesn’t want to let the ALS he’s living with slow him down but it almost happened on a recent American airlines flight out of Dallas, now he wants accountability which might be on the horizon.
“I didn’t do anything wrong, I did everything I was supposed to do. I had the wheelchair clearly marked. I had an instruction piece that they had made up just for when you travel with this chair on an airline, and it was all ignored just because they were in a hurry,” says Cloud
Thanks to a new power chair from the VA, Cloud is free to move around with hardly any limitations, but that almost got tricky for him after Cloud’s wife recorded video of airline employees mishandling his chair, which led to the $35,000 power chair being slightly damaged, according to Cloud.
“The idea of it being damaged just crushed me,” he says. “I would hope that these people would be as professional in the way that they do their job with customers and with their equipment and with they’re handling as they are with flying a plane.”
It highlights a big problem the US Transportation Department is working to address. The agency reports more than 11,000 devices were mishandled last year, up slightly from 2022. Under the new proposal, it would be easier for the Transportation Department to fine airlines up to roughly $125,000 if they damage a wheelchair or delay its return to the passenger at the end of a flight.
Fortunately for Cloud, things weren’t as bad as they could have been, but after waiting six months to get the chair, it’s something he never hopes to imagine again.
“You’ve got my legs that you’re loading up in the luggage compartment, and if you lose or damage or lose those legs, what am I supposed to do then,” says Cloud. “And if they would have hurt my chair and I wasn’t able to do something for 2-3 months. When you only have a short time to live, that’s a big deal.”
Cloud says he has no clue when his chair will get fixed and the time table for when the proposal would become final in unclear. WBRC did reach out to the Airline and is waiting for a response.
Get news alerts in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store or subscribe to our email newsletter here.
Copyright 2024 WBRC. All rights reserved.