Influencer shows how she travels the world while legally blind
Molly Burke is legally blind and has had many hard times traveling through an airport.
Staff Video, USA TODAY
Rob Birk was flying for the first time in about 30 years. But he’s not likely to get back on a plane again any time soon, after his wheelchair was damaged.
“I couldn’t prove that the airline did it but everything was fine before I left,” Birk said, explaining that the leg lock on his manual wheelchair was cracked after his flight.
He’d been traveling on Allegiant Airlines flight 378 from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to greater Cincinnati, Ohio, on March 23, and ultimately decided it would just be easier to repair the chair himself than to go through a formal complaint process.
“It is a piece that does break occasionally,” Birk said. “I go online, I look it up; it’s a piece I know I could replace myself and it’d be cheaper for me to do it myself than to have the wheelchair place do it with the labor they would have charged.”
Because Birk never filed a formal complaint with the airline, it’s unlikely that his incident will register in the Department of Transportation’s monthly tracking data. According to the DOT, airlines mishandle about 1.5% of the mobility devices they transport every month on average.
Tell us your story: Mobility device lost or damaged by an airline? USA TODAY wants to hear about it.
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In addition to wheelchair damage, Birk, who is an incomplete quadriplegic, said the whole experience of flying was uncomfortable and clearly not optimized for passengers with mobility issues.
“First off, they put you in that aisle chair,” which was uncomfortable and hard to sit in, Birk said. “I probably will not fly again for quite a while because of the whole transfer from my chair into that aisle chair and then from the aisle chair into the seat itself.”
How common is mobility equipment damage in air travel?
The DOT received 11,389 mobility device incident reports from U.S. airlines in 2022, up from 7,239 in 2021. That number likely does not include situations like Birk’s, which was never formally reported to the airline, highlighting the fact that the DOT data could well be incomplete.
This year, USA TODAY wants to highlight what those figures mean for travelers with disabilities. We’re looking to track these incidents throughout 2023 with the goal of bringing light to an all-too-common problem.
If your own mobility equipment was damaged or lost by an airline this year, please share your story with us using the form below:
Read Amanda Parkman’s experience with Southwest Airlines on her flight to New Orleans
Read Shayn Pulley’s experience with American Airlines on their flight to Philadelphia
Read Clifford Gowing’s experience with American Airlines on his flight to Miami
Read Heather Bennett’s experience with Delta Air Lines on her flight to Boston
Read Emily Voorde’s experience with United Air Lines on her flight to South Bend
Read Colleen Flanagan’s experience with JetBlue on her flight to Washington, D.C.
Read Andrew Bogdanov’s experience with Frontier Airlines on his flight to Atlanta
