(WTF?) Delta offers to put down cardboard while forcing disabled man to crawl on tarmac

[Playinghardball]

A disabled Hawaii man is suing Delta Airlines after he says that the company forced him to crawl across the airport tarmac three times and only offered him cardboard so he would not get his suit dirty.

A lawsuit filed last week in U.S. District Court in Hawaii claims that Baraka Kanaan was “forced to crawl across an airport tarmac, up and down the stairs of an airplane, down the aisle of the aircraft and out of and into his seat” on a series of flights between Massachusetts and Hawaii July 2012.

Kanaan, who is a former college professor and currently heads a nonprofit, was left disabled after a car accident in 2000 caused severe spinal injuries.

“I was forced by Delta Airlines, just days before having a spinal fusion surgery, I was forced to crawl from my chair, through the cabin of the plane, down a flight of stairs with no backing or sides and across the tarmac to get to my wheelchair,” Kanaan explained in a video posted to Facebook on Saturday. “Here we are in the modern day and people who are able bodied were standing around with their arms crossed watching me crawl under the guise that they could not touch me lest they be liable.”

Kanaan said that he did not initially go public about the incident because Delta swore to him that it would never happen to him or anyone else again. The company promised to be prepared before his next flight and offered him a $100 voucher for his troubles.

But when he arrived for his flight two days later, he was once again forced to crawl up a flight of stairs as Delta employees refused to assist other than offering him “a piece of cardboard to put down so that his clothes wouldn’t get dirty,” the lawsuit states

According to the complaint, Delta offered Kanaan 25,000 SkyMiles, but he refused because he never intended to fly the airline again.

As The Huffington Post noted, the Air Carrier Access Act requires airlines to “provide boarding assistance to individuals with disabilities by using ramps, mechanical lifts, or other suitable devices where level-entry boarding by loading bridge or mobile lounge is not available.”

“This has to stop. The question is, what’s the incentive to get Delta to stop?” Kanaan asked in Facebook video. “Well, my request is that you would call Delta headquarters… call them, complain that this stuff is happening. Complain. Call your representatives. Call somebody. Make it known that Delta cannot get away by treating disabled people this way. Because otherwise, they’re not going to do anything.”

Watch this video from Baraka Kanaan, uploaded July 27, 2013.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/07/29/delta-offers-to-put-down-cardboard-while-forcing-disabled-man-to-crawl-on-tarmac/

[Butterbean]

1. This makes me want to vomit and cry. n/t

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

3. Don't do that; write to Delta.

[Butterbean]

5. Delta is so far up my shit list for so many reasons, I would have to write a novella. n/t

[jberryhill]

15. Consider what he has to say about life....

Especially the line he delivers while walking backwards and balancing on one foot...

[cali]

2. I'm not sure I'm convinced.

There was another thread on this.

[SheilaT]

4. This story was posted here a day or so ago, and the consensus

of the responders, myself included, is that there is something seriously wrong with this man's story.

I'm a former airline employee, and airlines have been carrying wheelchair passengers on and off airplanes pretty much from the very beginning. We even had, at least in may day, a specific kind of chair known as a straight back, solely for carrying such passengers on and off the planes. Including up the stairs where there was no jetway.

So why do I think this is bogus?

[Puglover]

7. Sheila

Did you work for RC? When we (NW) and RC merged we were astounded at the different terms that the two airlines used. At NWA it was aislechair. At RC straightback. NWA "jetloader" RC "jetbridge"

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

9. I used to work for NW

but quit a couple years after the merger. I've even seen pilots help disabled passengers, and flight attendants do it on a regular basis, so this story does strike me as odd. The procedure always was to notify the arrival airport enroute that a wheelchair would be needed, and there would be one ready at the gate. Also, Delta (main line) doesn't fly to Nantucket (ACK); that route is serviced by Chautauqua, which is one of its regional feeders. I am wondering why this guy isn't taking the matter up with Chautauqua or with the airport itself?

[SheilaT]

17. MO and then AL.

At DCA for ten years. 1969-1979.

I don't recall a lot of differences in terminology after the MO-AL merger, but it's possible I've simply forgotten.

[Butterbean]

8. I hope it is, for the sake of common decency.

My dad had to be wheeled from gate to gate in the airport in Atlanta, and the Delta employee who wheeled him had to run with us to try to catch our connecting flight (Delta was late...it was a huge disaster, but that is another long story). He was very accommodating and helpful. I never saw anyone on any of my flights requiring assistance other than my dad, and he doesn't use a chair regularly, so I can't attest to the veracity of this claim from personal experience.

If there's anything on this earth that makes me crazier, it's disability rights and/or those who trample on them/ignore them. I get very upset about stories about disabled people being abused or mistreated, it's just too personal for me. So I hope and pray this story is a lie, because I so don't want it to be true.

[Nevernose]

16. "Made him crawl across the Tarmac..."

That's why you think this story is bogus.

[Puglover]

6. Hmmm isn't this why they invented aislechairs?

This story smells to high heaven.

[truedelphi]

10. I would tend to agree with you, but then I

encountered a Marin County Bus Driver, who was so friggin' mean to a man in a wheelchair. She verbally abused him, as she strapped his wheel chair into position, (after slamming the cahair around, back and forth) and ranting and raving that he was the reason she would be behind on her schedule.

He later sued the transportation people in Marin, and got 20,000 dollars.

But there was simply no reason for the abuse.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

11. You have to wonder what makes people so damn mean sometimes.

[jberryhill]

12. Conflicting demands over which they have no power

That makes a lot of people mean.

[Bandit]

13. Republican ideology?

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

14. Not necessarily. Republican ideology is sometimes used

to justify mean behavior, but I've known some professed liberals who were as mean as snakes, and one who was a straight-up sociopath. Some people are just bastards irrespective of their political inclinations.