Aren’t special privileges a wonderful thing?
HOUSTON (CBS HOUSTON) – A wheelchair request can put you at the front of a long airport line.
Or, at least, that’s the angle some fully-abled passengers are using to cut through the winding queues at airport security checkpoints, the New York Times reported. According to the 1986 Air Carrier Access Act, airlines are required to accommodate disabled travelers — who need not show any proof of disability — free of charge.
And this isn’t news to airport staffers.
“When [travelers] see that the line is so long, they just ask for a wheelchair,” Evelyn Danquah, an attendant for Delta Air Lines, told the Times. She said she has seen some wheelchair fakers stand and walk away as soon as they clear security. Wheelchair attendants — whose salaries range between $9 and $14 an hour, with tips, help to maintain a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy regarding the line-hopping strategy in hopes of bolstering their paychecks, the Times reported.
Most people are justly outraged over non-disabled people taking advantage of such a system. But what is fair about it? In most parking lots, all of the best places are reserved for the disabled, but that doesn’t mean disabled; it means having a disabled plate. If you have a disabled plate, whether you are in fact disabled, or the nature of your disability is irrelevant. You just need the right doctor’s signature on the right piece of paper.
Besides, what is disabled? We all are supposed to know it when we see it, but just how many disabled people are in wheelchairs, anyway? And how many people in wheelchairs are actually disabled? When folks get old or have cancer or surgery or something, they will use wheelchairs to get around when circumstances might render ordinary walking impossible, but they don’t want to become legally disabled.
And I knew a woman who used a wheelchair even though there was nothing wrong with her. She became a leading disabled rights activist.
Who gets to decide? If I needed a wheelchair and got a motorized one so I could get around as fast as a person who walked, why should that put me ahead of everyone else?
When the “differently abled” are favored, this invites competition, and everybody wants to get into the act.
Comments
4 responses to “Oh my achin’ back!”
Whats your solution?
I assure you that BOTH of my parents are disabled. But, you know – both of them are SO disabled that neither my brother nor I use disabled parking spaces when driving them around. We stop IN FRONT of wherever they need to be, take them out of the car, take them in, go back to the car, and go park.
The handicapped spaces are too far.
Oh, and btw, both of them are so disabled that they can’t drive.
BUT – abuses abound whenever someone is given a break. There do exist many legitimately disabled who need to get places and do things. And I don’t believe that giving them a closer-and larger-parking spot is unfair to those of us who can use–and should–the exercise.
I think…perhaps…we should have a chat with those (doctors) who sign off on handicapped permits for the “abled”? And the airlines should certainly require-at the very least a disabled parking permit along with the wheelchair?
Or, better yet, they could dump the Transportation Security Administration and get everyone on in a reasonable time. Thusly removing any need to get around the stupid time-wasting/humiliating simple attempt to travel as a legal CITIZEN?
erm. /rant off. 🙂