A young woman says she is never flying Jetstar again after she was forced to carry her disabled sister off a plane when the airline failed to produce her wheelchair.
Danae Floria, 24, has told Nine News she had to carry her 26-year-old sister Marissa more than 100m through Perth Domestic Airport after staff lost her sister’s chair.
Marissa, who suffers from cerebral palsy, has a specifically designed wheelchair to meet her needs – which Ms Florias made clear to staff on board the flight.
The staff offered her a generic airline wheelchair in place of her own.
“Your wheelchair is no good to me, my sister can’t hold her body up, and needs her specific one designed for her specifically,” Ms Florias told the staff member, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
“She just looked at me with a blank look, I just got no response whatsoever. By that time my sister was hysterical because she gets very anxious so easily and was like ‘oh my God they’ve lost my wheelchair'”.
The chair was later found in oversized baggage.
Watch the full report, below:
Top Comments
we fly with our disabled child who looks very much like the sister in this story. It is hell to fly anyway with a child with disabilities who can't walk. getting her on the seat in the plane is hard work. Sitting in the seat is difficult with not torso strength. Last time we flew from gold coast to perth with qantas we had no problems with the wheelchair however. The chair does go in oversize luggage. They provide a temporary chair until you get your chair. There should be no way for things to go wrong, unless oversize luggage goes missing, in which case they need to provide a wheelchair until such time as it is found. I can't understand how this happened. We happened to fly last time on the same plane as a couple of foster carers who had five disabled children with them. One of the children next to us lost her feeding tube (PEG) connection as she was sliding down the plane seat. I don't know why this lady didn't ask for help, but instead she let this child cry and cry (non verbal child) and slide forward to the point of being in pain the whole flight and she basically ignored her for five hours. Maybe its too much hard work. I don't know. All I know is flying with children with severe disabilities is really hard work anyway. Anything that can be done to make it easier would be great.
I don't know, I found that the airlines bent over backwards for me when I flew whilst on crutches. When I landed in Perth from Thailand, they insisted I jump in the wheelchair, it wasn't a big airport so I was happy to walk with my crutches. My sister nearly wet her pants laughing at me when I came out. I had a staff member pushing me even though I said my son could do it. It was pretty funny really. I also didn't have to get in line anywhere, I was ushered straight to the front at Melbourne, Bangkok and Perth airports. At Bangkok, I had a guy with me for ages, he dropped me off at a bar (my request, I am not great on planes, a few drinks help) and came back later to pick me up to board. Our plane was boarding via the tarmac so I had to get in this sort of bus thing which drives around to all the different planes and the hydrolics lift it up so you dont have to walk up the stairs. It was so funny, my son loved it! It took cabin crew ages to get my crutches to me when we landed, I can only imagine getting a wheelchair from under the plane would take much, much longer.