THE RIGHT TO "MOBILITY"
For Persons with Disabilities in airports
By Chrysis Michaelides
Human rights are to-day a fact and they are safeguarded. Especially the rights of persons who for various reasons have mobility difficulties, have been consolidated with various decisions and instructions by the EU, with United Nations conventions and by special lows in every member country.
Senior citizens, pregnant women, patients and persons with disabilities are those with mobility problems have their right safeguarded by EU instructions, with special stress on air transport companies and airport officials.
Although in every EU airport we can see special services ready to offer help, to any passenger with mobility problems, with wheel chairs and escorts. Unfortunately problems inside the airports still exist and make moving around to such people very difficult once they decide to travel by plane.
The problems start from the moment that the person with mobility problems arrives at the airport and usually can not find a place to park in front of the airport and can not communicate with the foreign personnel who are in charge.
This is followed (not always) by the inability of the employees of air companies to correctly operate the private wheel chairs of the passengers.
It is important here to say that a wheel chair IS NOT AN APPARATUS and it can not go separately as luggage, but it should go with the passenger, until the passenger enters the airplane. Only then should the escort or some other employee take it and load it on the plane, as the last item, so that after landing, it will come out first waiting for its owner at the airplane exit with a new escort.
It is clear that the wheel chair needs a special treatment, with special documents (with a special tug on it) and it should not be weighted or even worse it should not be lost in airports. This happened to me personally, upon my arrival to Cyprus, to find out that my wheel chair was left at the last airport.
Therefore the air travel employee must, upon check in, handle the wheel chair correctly and then the escort should know how to correctly store it upon the entrance of the passenger on the plane.
Surely the passenger should NOT, under any circumstances, pay for the wheel chair’s weight, since the wheel chair is a part of the passenger, which the passenger always needs.
Any other handling of the wheel chair removes the passenger’s right for mobility and the air company should be held responsible and guilty of violation of the specific EU instruction.
It is high time for organizations of person with mobility problems to protect their members (when they are asked for it) and to safeguard their members’ rights. They are responsible for this matter.
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