Airlines need to stop treating mobility equipment as luggage, disabled traveler says

Amanda Parkman's wheelchair suffered some cracks and a broken headlight cover after a trip earlier this month. It was annoying, but it could have been much worse. When the 36-year-old assistant professor at the University of Arizona traveled from Tucson, Arizona, to New Orleans on Feb. 2, she was prepared for possible complications. She was flying by herself, as she usually does, but as someone who relies on a wheelchair to get around, dealing with the vagaries of air travel can be frustrating, she said. This time, she said, she got off relatively lucky. Although Parkman couldn't speak to the ramp workers at the airport in Las Vegas where she was connecting before her chair was improperly loaded – on its side, from what she could see – the resulting damage was mostly cosmetic. A plastic cover on one of her headlamps was cracked and fell off in New Orleans, and another piece that covers some of the chair's mechanisms was also cracked at some point along her journey. She returned to Tucson via Houston on Feb. 13.<br/>"Consistency across airports, it's never the same," she said, referring to the way disabled passengers are communicated with and treated by airlines and airports around the world. Parkman has osteogenesis imperfecta, also known as brittle bones, and always has to ensure airline and airport employees understand how to handle her wheelchair. She almost always tries to speak to the ramp supervisor before her chair is loaded on the plane and provides written instructions with photos on how to load and store it, with varying results on every trip.<br/>