Airplanes are not adequately accessible, so Claire and her husband stopped using air travel.

Transcript

Not much beautiful about getting on an airplane besides being able to get somewhere. But airplanes are not accessible and boy I wish they would be. Buses could be, but for some reason, we’re told airplanes “can’t make it happen”. So if you use a power wheelchair and you can’t independently transfer out of your wheelchair, then the experience of trying to travel would be weeks of preparation ahead of time. And actually having specialized equipment made so that Luke had something sitting under his feet so his feet weren’t hanging, something to keep, hold his head up in the seat in the airplane. And when you have equipment that Luke’s life depends on like ventilation equipment and that kind of thing, packing becomes a whole new journey. Because there’s many things that you really can’t forget, right? And I think that’s part of my learning and my perspective again. I mean, I used to complain that “Oh, I forgot my bathing suit,” if I went on a trip. And now when I hear people complain I just think, “Oh my God. If you can buy it when you get there and it’s not going to mean life or death, it’s really okay.”

So the airlines are not—or I guess they’re used to having people with disabilities fly—but our experience is that it’s always with a bit of a sigh, because it’s a lot of work for them to…and so Luke and I actually joke—since we’ve flown a few times in the last few years—if we’re just going out to pick up a friend who’s flying into town or whatever, we always joke that we’re going to just drive by the ticket counters for the airlines just to scare them a little bit.

---

Go back