4 replies to this topic

[Gary Anderson]

Don't know if this is true. A friend at work told me of a 63 yr old paraplegic woman who was stranted on a Ryanair plane for over an hour waiting for an ambilift to get her off. In the meantime, her wheelchair was sitting in one inch of snow of the runway and - WAIT FOR IT - so was her husband!! Naturally, a claim is going into Ryanair for treating someone like that.

However, what I find hard to believe is this - if I was on a plane with a partner/spouse or whatever - I would like to think that they would go and get someone to help me rather than stand there like a lemon for an hour.

Last time I was on a plane, my companion was the one who co-ordinated everything for me when there were holdups.

Still, I suppose it takes all kinds.


PS By the way Simon - like the new style of board.

[Apparelyzed]

Yup, that story is true!

DISABLED GRANNY IS ABANDONED ON JET
EXCLUSIVE Crew get off without Ellen
By Victoria Ward

A DISABLED gran was left abandoned on a holiday jet by its crew, cleaners and even the pilot.

Ellen Cummings was then ignored by staff who boarded the Ryanair plane to prepare for its next flight.

The 63-year-old paraplegic claimed one even barked at her: "Can't you get off, we're already 30 minutes late?"

Ellen was rescued only after her wheelchair was spotted in an inch of snow on the ground and workers finally brought specialist lifting equipment.

The furious pensioner, who claimed she was trapped for an hour, said: "I have never been so humiliated. It's a disgrace, no one should be treated like that."

Ellen's ordeal after a holiday in Spain with husband Sam, 65, began after the jet landed at Stansted airport in Essex.

Sam got off to wait for her to be brought out on an ambulift.

Ellen said: "Everybody got off, the passengers and crew. The captain said he'd phoned three times for help but no one was responding. Then he left." Cleaners came on and swept up around her. Then a new crew arrived, followed by passengers for the next flight. Ellen added: "They knew I was stranded but couldn't do anything." After she was rescued, she complained to Ryanair. But she said: "They didn't care and were very rude."

Stansted's airfield services apologised to Ellen, of Chorley, Lancs, and said the blunder was "due to a "communication breakdown".

Ryanair said: "We asked airfield services to investigate."

In 2004 the Mirror revealed the airline charged passengers £18 to hire a wheelchair.

It backed down but slapped a levy on all customers to cover wheelchair use.

[Simon]

What annoys me in these cases is the blame falling on the airline. Its the airports responsibility to transfer people on/off aircraft. If the captain called 3 times for help to the ground crew as is reported but no one responded why is Ryanair to blame?
Isn't it about time the airports concerned in these situations took some of the flack?
We had a situation a little similar travelling to live over here, the ground crew forgot us, we realised when we saw our fellow passengers from checkin passing us at the waiting point going out to the plane.
So we decided to just follow them and arrived at the bottom of the aircraft steps. The stewardess sees me and immediately called the ground crew who left the other plane they were loading with other disabled people and came over with the ambulift (with the disabled people in it!). Promptly the ambulift completely broke down, so they had to lift me on up the stairs, in meantime the stewardess realised I was too tall for row 5 which is all checkin would allocate me and had to move all row 1 occupants to row 5, so I could go on row 1 as we had demaded at checkin.
None of these events was Monarchs fault, checkins are manned by airport staff and the cock up was the ground crews fault. Monarch (the stewardess) was excellent and deserves praise for at least trying to sort the bad situation out.

Edited by Simon, 28 March 2006 - 10:28 AM.

[russ1]

It may not be the airlines fault but it is their responsibility. If you employ a plumbing company who messes up a job do you go after the plumber personally or the company he works for? In the first example the Airline is clearly at fault - they should not have left the airplane until all their passengers were disembarked under any circumstances, to leave a old lady to her own devices is unforgivable.

In all cases your ticket is bought from the airline so your contract is with them. If they choose to subcontract services to airport staff and ground crew then it is their (the airlines) responsibility to make sure that those services are provided to the standard expected by THEIR customer. If those services are below standard then it is the airlines responsibility to sort it out and it is NOT acceptable to stand back and say "it's not my fault it was his fault". Your contract is with the Airline so it's clearly their responsibility.

In the situation in the last example being lifted onto the plane up the steps manually is not in my mind an acceptable solution. Another ambilft should have been found and the plane delayed until it was. What a lot of people don't realise is that the disabled person in that sort of situation has the upper hand. If they don't take you then they have to off load your luggage (in case it has a bomb in it) which is almost certainly a longer process than actually finding another ambilift.

[Simon]

I know they're legally liable and in our view it was easier to be lifted up the aircraft steps in my own chair rather than transferred onto those crazy tiny seats and then into an ambulift. I reckon if we'd insisted another ambulift wasfound we'd have been there 24 hours. B'ham only has one ambulift, the plane missed its flight slot anyway, causing (very fortunately) only a 20 minute delay until another slot came free.