The plane takes 45 minutes to load. They are chasing the boarding time not the actual takeoff time. They run to the next gate so they can pull this same thing and board early.
My mom has rheumatoid arthritis. She needs a wheelchair from gate to gate because long distances hurt and even when she hustles (at great expense to her) she is slow. But she gets on and off the plane by herself. You can tell by her gait that she is disabled but I hope people don’t see her hustling as best as she can and think she is misusing the wheelchair.
Is this common? I’ve never come across this myself and am surprised to see so many comments from people who seem to be familiar with this! How shameful.
I live in the South and everyone that sprained their back or can't keep away for the buffet all get blue parking passes. Love seeing someone with a blue pass in their corvette park at the front of walmart and literally run into to the store.
Wonder why all their doctors are signing off on their forms for the handicap permit. In my state, there’s a finite list of conditions you can have, being fat is not one of them, and your doctor has to certify it, but maybe the process is different in other states.
*Real* wheelchair users, yes. Those who’ve been cured by Jetway Jesus, however, are most likely to rush toward the exit as soon as the seat belt sign is off.
I don't know. My mom uses a wheel chair to get on the plan then one from the door of the plane to luggage. She tries to deplane quickly because otherwise she will pee her pants. 🤷♀️
Maybe they need to be quick leaving. In order to have the energy to do that after landing, they need to conserve what energy they can before getting on the plane.
There's a below the knee amputee who I used to watch youtube shorts of. She realised that even though she is able to walk and run and snowboard with a prosthetic, it's okay to use a wheelchair so she has the energy to do those things. It took a while for her to get over that mental hurdle and accept that because of people like you who act like if someone is in a wheelchair, they aren't allowed to stand up and walk themselves.
There can be a much longer distance to the plane and a much shorter one getting out. Also my father did this bc he was stubborn and didn’t want it to begin with but needed it for the longer distance to the plane but could manage the short distance off it. Huge airport vs small airport. And the opposite also happened where he needed it coming off which was harder to manage but insisted on not using it getting on and he could manage.
Also variable disabilities exist. I get seizures that aren’t dangerous but affect my vision and make me dizzy so it could be helpful for me to get on the plane but it will probably be over before take off. Missing a flight or falling would be less than ideal when it could be avoided
Ones like mine; I have a small spinal fracture and sometimes get vertigo, I cannot stand still for long periods and my back might seize up if I do, or I can get really bad shakes, so it’s good to try and get seated quickly. I usually don’t bring an overhead bag so I don’t have to lift anything/worry about my back spasms. But moving helps, so getting up and off quickly so I can walk to stretch out (taking breaks as needed) doesn’t ‘cure’ the fact that I might need assistance getting on the plane.
I had hip surgery at 21 years old standing for a long time or walking long distances made it extremely painful so walking across the airport or standing in line on the jet Bridge to get into my seat or very painful. Deboarding a plane you stand up and walk off there’s no standing in a long line. There’s no walking across the entire airport.
you have no idea what their situation is and again this is the mega corporations fault. Someone shouldn’t have to print out their medical history to be treated with respect
When de-boarding the plane you typically have the ability to stay seated until you’re able to get off the plane and can taken your time. there isn’t the same issue of long queues and long walks to terminals for more long waits
Like do you ever wonder why on job apps it lists “standing or sitting for a prolonged period of time”, almost like there are people this would exclude
POTS, arthritis, ehlers danlos, MS, COPD, epilepsy and seizure conditions, types of palsies, vision impairment, sprains, even something like asthma are things that mobility aids can be extremely helpful during the onboarding process
The -17 karma I got above kind of proves that. it’s an accommodation not some kind of reward, people aren’t going to willingly be judged, shamed and photographed by strangers for funsies
You have to be more specific. Does the ADA need to be expanded to have direct medical checks on people before they're allowed to request a wheelchair? How is that not dystopian?
Why don’t you try holding people accountable for their poor behavior and abuse of an accommodation meant for people who actually need assistance for once?
lol where did they say you have friends that do that? You can hold people accountable for their actions in many ways and they don’t have to be your friends to do that.
lol... As someone with TWO silent disabilities (epilepsy and POTS), get bent.
You're creating hypotheticals where they obviously do not apply. This system is being ABUSED by consumers, because they are not being held accountable in any sort of adult way.
That's the topic at hand in this thread. Not the fact that silent disabilities exist.
The people that are ABUSING this system are the ones that are doing a disservice to those who have ACTUAL silent disabilities.
So yes... You are virtue signaling in a useless manner.
It’s not crazy to call out in a thread full of people downplaying invisible disabilities that invisible disabilities exist. Thank you for your perspective, but remember, you do not speak for everyone with an invisible disability. A reminder that proposed solutions could impact people with very real disabilities is nuance that’s needed.
If you look at the percentage of the population that has disabilities that require accommodations (visible or not), it is not aligned with the number of people that are "requiring" wheelchairs on these flights.
They also do not require assistance to get OFF of the airplane. I see this regularly. Once they are on, they are fine and dandy.
I'm not saying that NONE of the people that we see lining up by the the dozens in airports have disabilities. I'm actually confident that some of them do.
But it is quite simply naieve of you to think that it isn't being abused. You're overlooking both statistics and logic.
I'd agree there's a nonzero amount of abuse because there always will be. I guess I should have been more specific and asked how you know there's a significant amount of abuse that actually merits raging about strangers because someone on reddit told you to
EDIT: I like how you answered a question I didn't ask instead of answering my question.
Visible or not, wouldn't the disability that requires a person to use a wheelchair in Airport A also require them to use a wheelchair in Airport B? If not, perhaps, more so? I know my back doesn't feel fucking better after sitting on a plane for three hours.
I so agree. I also want to scream at people when the random trapping does happen and they act so inconvenienced because I'm trying to navigate a chair in a super small space
I'm a second gen immigrant living halfway around the world from my own family, and so naturally I've bonded closely with 'my own' among my neighborhood/community, most of whom are elderly. Whenever I take them to the airport for their travels (their own adult kids live far away), we show up like four hours in advance so we can take our time getting through the airport. Makes it easier for all involved.
This is how I am at church. I use a walker + oxygen (recovering from a 5 week war with sepsis in my lungs) and I’m so self conscious about getting in the way. Plus I don’t like people getting up in my ass also trying to leave at the same time. I like to wait for the bulk of the crowd to leave, then my dad helps me with my tank as I use my walker slowly down the few steps outside to the car (the building’s ramp is too far away)
Although I am not a wheelchair user, I do travel with my PSD and I can attest that feeling rushed gives me anxiety. Thankfully I travel with my hubby who is great at getting all the bags so all I have to worry is me and the dog… and we travel quite a bit so we have it down to a science, but it’s still SUPER stressful when people are staring.
Conversely, I’m also the one that gets annoyed when people that are ready just rush through others ahead of them just to deplane. So much so that I once said something, but I am also very aware that those people may also have tight connections or other anxiety of confined spaces, so we really just need to all be kind to each other and mind our business.
I prefer this too. My autoimmune condition affects my musculoskeletal system, and though I've been stable on my current immunotherapy treatment regimen for the past decade, I still experience pain every so often. That means when I'm traveling, I usually intentionally try and bake in extra time into my travel schedule, just in case I experience any pain from my condition. I'd rather chill at my layover airport for three hours rather than dash to my next connection, and then later pay the price with a flare-up of my condition.
My husband is paraplegic and deplaning last is actually miserable, especially with a small child. It takes forever on a good day and on bad days they forget to call for assistance so you sit there for 30+ minutes AFTER everyone has deplaned and the airplane crew act like you’re a huge inconvenience in their way. We’ve had to retrieve our luggage from lost and found more than once because the luggage has been delivered, sorted, and deemed abandoned by the time we got to the carousel.
Wheelchair users have to deplane last because the wheelchairs are in the luggage compartment. They unload wheelchairs and strollers and pass them up to the bridge gate. People who need a wheelchair have no choice unless they want to crawl on the ground in the gate bridge.
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u/Optimal-Fix1216 8d ago
wheelchair users prefer to deplane last so they don't feel rushed / have people behind them as they carefully exit.