Disabled Delta passenger made to ‘crawl’ off flights speaks to Gadling

by Jeffrey White on

I’ve been contacted by the disabled Delta passenger with muscular dystrophy who says she was forced to crawl off two different Delta flights on July 20 after wheelchairs were not available when her flights landed.

She was traveling Harrisburg –> Atlanta –> West Palm Beach.

I posted about the incidents on Wednesday.

Her name is Julianna Dombrowski, and she is a 53-year-old retired accountant who lives in the West Palm Beach area of Florida. She has muscular dystrophy and lives in a house with no stairs.

She agreed to answer some follow-up questions from Gadling.

We wanted to clarify exactly what happened, at least in her own words rather than through third parties. Some readers have suggested that Dombrowski requested her wheelchairs after the flights in question landed, which would explain why none were waiting. Also, semantics or not, some readers are questioning whether Dombrowski really crawled off her flights, or merely struggled to get off them by herself. I agree with this distinction in this case: While both are horrifying and not acceptable, the image of a disabled person forced to crawl certainly is more disgusting to consider and has the power to drive a level of angry reaction in people that perhaps exaggerates what really happened.

I’ve also been contacted by a few Delta flight attendants who say they know what really happened on these flights. None so far have agreed to go on the record.

Below is what Dombrowski had to tell Gadling.
Gadling: Did you arrange for a wheelchair to be present at both of the arrivals in question in advance? I imagine this is done (a.) at the time of booking or (b.) before landing, by alerting the flight crew that you need special assistance leaving the plane.

Dombrowski: When I purchased my ticket online I checked the wheelchair box. I placed a follow-up call because I needed to change the seating because of my handicap.

On flight 4664 from Harrisburg to Atlanta I checked with the flight attendant in route because I knew the turn around time would be tight because of a delay out of Harrisburg. She advise me she could not request the wheelchair until we landed.

Policy dictates the all other passengers leave the plane before the wheelchair passengers. I asked if this could be changed so I could get off first to make my connection. When the flight arrived on the tarmac the wheelchair was not there, so I waited until everyone had disembarked and the chair still had not arrived. I assumed additional help would arrive with the chair and it did not.

This may seem like hair-splitting, but did you literally crawl off the plane? I want to be as specific as possible. Oftentimes we use the term crawl metaphorically, which gets the point across even as it carries with it a pretty horrific image that might not be entirely accurate in terms of what really happened.

My disability is weakness in my leg and glut muscles, which forces me to live in a stair-less environment. In order to try to make my connection I needed to climb backwards down the staircase holding onto each step with my hands because the railing was not firm and did not give me the support to exit the staircase. I did not walk down those steps.

As to the shuttle bus in order to get into something high I need to hold onto something and use my upper body to pull myself up to get my second leg up onto each step and onto the seat.

Who do you blame? Delta Airlines in general? Delta crew? Delta ground crew? The airports (since I’m told, after the fact, that it is the airports’ responsibility to provide wheelchairs to the disabled)?

Dombrowski: I am unsure who to blame but believe someone must be held accountable for this disgraceful lack of respect for the handicapped when there are extended delays at an airport.

Has Delta been in touch since you sent your letter?

I sent my letter overnight mail on July 21st. I have confirmation it was received on July 22. I did receive two phone calls from Delta representatives on July 24th who said they are researching my complaints.

I have recently spoken to several representatives from Delta. They seem to be sincere in making things right for the next handicapped passenger. They cannot undue what was done. They offered me to participate in special handicap employee seminars to give my feedback to the appropriate personnel so I can help make a difference for other handicapped fliers.

Delta is taking responsibility for the contractors who dropped the ball on 7/20/08.

Corpse found on Delta Airlines flight

by Jeffrey White on

Delta flight attendants working a Los Angeles — Atlanta route yesterday discovered the body of a dead 61-year-old woman in the lavatory not long before the plane landed.

There are still a lot of questions: Investigators do not know how the woman died, or how long she had been in the lavatory. She might not have been discovered if crew members hadn’t noticed that the lavatory was occupied as the plane went into final approach.

Police met the plane and removed the body, taking it to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation Crime Lab for an autopsy that was expected to be completed today.

MedAire, an Arizona company that makes doctors available on the ground to help flight crews in medical emergencies, says it counted a total of 89 in-flight deaths among the situations it handled in 2006, the last year for which it had data, according to the Associated Press.

Another disabled traveler horror story: Delta passenger with muscular dystrophy forced to crawl off plane

by Jeffrey White on

Earlier this month I posted on a husband who had to carry his wheelchair-bound wife onto a Ryanair flight after the airline failed to make sure the proper equipment — in this case, an Ambulift — was available at the plane during boarding. The Ambulift never showed up.

While we can debate all day whether the airline’s crew in this case could have done something else to help, what we cannot debate is that amid all this discussion about what is and what is not in the job description of airline crew, it is undeniably a part of the job to make sure that disabled passengers are accommodated during the boarding and de-planing process.

A woman named Julianna, who has muscular dystrophy, says she found herself having to crawl down the steps off a Delta Airlines flight July 20 in an effort to make a connecting flight after it took the airline more than 30 minutes to produce a wheelchair and lift.

Her flight landed in Atlanta at 7:30 p.m. Her connecting flight departed at 8:05 p.m. Her wheelchair showed up at…8:05 p.m.

At one point, Julianna says flight crew members told her she might end up making the connection if she stopped standing around waiting for help. How busy they were trying to track down that chair is unclear.

Her ordeal continued for the next several hours. Delta agents haggled about whose job it was to push Julianna around in her wheelchair as she got re-ticketed (obviously she missed her connection) and assigned to a new gate. The Delta ground crew members who were supposed to be on call for such a task apparently weren’t answering their stations.

When Julianna reached her final destination, West Palm Beach, again Delta did not have a wheelchair waiting, and she crawled onto the shuttle bus, she says.

No doubt there will be finger pointing about whose responsibility it was to help Julianna, and who dropped the ball. There always is during these incidents of apparent incompetence. The flight crew? The ground crew?

Perhaps Julianna is exaggerating the incident, as irate travelers can. But either the wheelchairs were waiting for her, or they were not.

If, as it appears, they were not, then Delta Airlines dropped the ball, regardless of who specifically you pin it on.

There are few excuses I can think of for not having wheelchairs waiting for passengers who need them.

Forced to crawl, Julianna is justified in venting her disgust, as she does in a letter to Delta CEO Richard Anderson excerpted on the consumer advocacy Web site The Consumerist.

West Palm Beach is not ranked among the world’s best airports. Go figure. So … what are the world’s best airports?



Click the images to find out which airports are the best … and why!

How to rent three cars and get a free plane ticket on Delta

by Grant Martin on

Got some free time over the next three weeks? Delta just launched a promo offering 9,999 miles for each rental with one of their auto partners Avis or Budget. Each qualifying rental gets you the miles, regardless of how long you keep the vehicle, as long as you book with Delta’s Car Search tool. You have until the end of the month to rent and you need to sign up to become a SkyMiles member first.

Sure, you may not be traveling three times in the next month, but do you need to? If you can get three car rentals cheap enough, the time and money invested in getting a car at the airport for 24 hours can easily be less than a domestic ticket that you could book with miles.

Rental car fees vary wildly across geographical boundaries, but almost every airport in the country has either an Avis or a Budget rental car location. And many of those rural locations have plenty of inventory (at damn good prices) available for the rest of July.

Here in Detroit, a car rental over a weekend night on Budget is about 55$. Times three is 165$ for 29,997 miles or an award ticket. In Kalamazoo, a more rural airport near where my parents live, it’s 24$. That’s 72$ for a flight.

Sure, you have to factor in what you’re going to DO with the car and what you’re going to do with YOUR car while you have the rental. You could always just take it home or to a parking lot and park it. Or park it on the lawn of the rental company.

But it’s not a bad way to rack up a few frequent flyer miles to use for future adventure on Delta Airlines.

What could you do with 25k miles or a domestic award ticket? You could fly from your freezing hometown in New Hampshire down to Phoenix next January to get some sun and play some golf while your coworkers freeze. You could fly to Colorado to get some kick ass skiing in next May. You could pay for your girlfriend to come visit you next time you’re in San Diego on business.

Sound like a good use for your 74$ invested this month?

Irate first class passenger pulls emergency slide, leaves plane

by Jeffrey White on

There seems to be no shortage of stupid things passengers are doing on planes these days.

The latest boneheaded move happened in Guyana this past Friday. A first class passenger on a Delta flight from New York to Guyana became so angry that economy passengers were exiting the plane before him that he activated the plane’s emergency slide and used it to leave the plane.

The Associated Press, via MSNBC.com, is reporting that airport authorities in Guyana promptly arrested the man, who they described as intoxicated. The man posted bail and was released not long after the incident.

Delta says it intends to press charges against the man on the grounds that he obstructed the flight crew.

For those of you out there wondering how much of a hassle it is to repack the emergency slide, Gadling’s resident flight attendant Heather Poole says it is a huge expense for an airline, which has to take the plane out of service. “It doesn’t get fixed quick, that’s for sure,” she says.

Thanks, Ben, for tipping us off to the story!