USA Today hits another one out of the park today with a story on lax wheelchair service for airline passengers. According to the report, in the three years that the government has issued statistics, 54% of some 34,000 complaints by disabled passengers have concerned wheelchair assistance. The problem, it seems, comes from substandard service by contractors the airlines hire and not the airlines themselves. From the report: “With pressure on their profits — collectively, they lost $35 billion in the five years ended in 2006 — U.S. airlines typically contract with outside companies for wheelchair service at airports. Critics such as Fernando Torres-Gil, a Los Angeles airports commissioner and polio survivor who uses a wheelchair himself at airports, say the contractors often give substandard service. Torres-Gil cites low wages, high turnover and a lack of training.”
According to the report, these workers make less than $19,000 a year on average and many are not formally trained in how to lift an immobile passenger. Eric Lipp of Open Doors Organization, a Chicago-based non-profit that tracks the disability consumer market for the travel industry, says that money, or lack thereof, is the root of the problem. “Ninety percent of the wheelchair problems exist because there’s no money in it,” Lipp tells USA Today. “I’m not 100% convinced that airline executives are really willing to pay for this service.”
