[Travelandtourism] airline fined incomplete disability complaint reports

[Prows, Bennett (HHS/OCR)]

Hi Listers,

 

I had a strange incident aboard a continental flight from Houston to
Seattle on May 2.  This hasn't happened to me for 20 years, and when it
did, I thought Horizon was a small airlines, and the flight attendants
didn't know the way things were.

 

This time, during the second leg of my flight home from Baltimore, I was
sitting in an aisle seat as I usually try to do.  Before we taxied onto
the run way, I heard one of the flight attendants, (may have been the
head dude) talking quietly to the passenger across from me.  I wasn't
really paying attention to what was said.  All of a sudden, the flight
attendant turned to me and said, that the passenger across the aisle
from me had agreed to be responsible for assisting me in the event of a
necessary evacuation.  I immediately told the flight attendant that the
action on his part of asking anything of the passenger across from me
was inappropriate, that it isn't in any of the rules for disabled
passengers, nor did I think this was his airline's policy.  I assured
him that I would seek assistance or not, depending on the circumstances,
and that it was wrong to assume I needed someone to be responsible for
me, particularly to inconvenience a fellow passenger with some
responsibility like that.  

 

He said he just wanted to make sure everyone would get off safely in the
event of an emergency, and I told him I would.  I let it go at this.
But had an in depth conversation with the willing passenger, and was
able to educate him about how things work in the world.  I told him
about the time a train derailed with two other blind passengers and
myself aboard, and how we assisted the sighted passengers to get out of
the train in the dark.  We had a nice chat, and so I left the matter at
that.

 

Has anyone had a similarly disturbing experience on other than
Continental, or for that matter on that air carrier?

 

/s/

 

Bennett Prows