Originally Posted by
thbe
It’s like wheelchairs for boarding/deboarding. Obviously less than 10% of those who use that service really need that service. Always funny to watch 85 year old Japanese people walking to their seats and at the same time 60 year old - not disabled - Indian people getting pushed in a wheelchair, often accompanied by up to a dozen of their relatives. For some reasons some of them who deboarded in wheelchairs can be watched walking around in the lounge later. There is no medical reason, why sometimes there are dozens of wheelchairs at a gate at AUH or DBX, if there is a plan arriving from India, but almost none, if the plane is arriving from Japan. The easiest way to heal the world is to charge a fee for the wheelchair service at airports.
Before you get quite so judgy about this, step back and take a moment - I have some personal experience in this area thanks to a parent who struggled for a number of years with restricted mobility until they could have some surgery to restore "normal". Please take a moment to hear me out...
The nature of their mobility issue consisted of three main things relevant to travelling through an airport:
* They could not stand for long periods of more than 5-10 minutes at a time - so no long queues at check-in, security, boarding.
* They could not walk very fast - so last minute gate changes don't work out well.
* They could not climb or descend steps quickly, and steep steps they couldn't deal with at all - so no walking down to the apron, and remote stands with airstairs, not a good combination - but a normal jetbridge, with level boarding, no problem at all.
The airlines offer them only *one* solution - bung them in a wheelchair - one size fits all. It's this which is the problem.
They sure as hell didn't want to be pushed around in a wheelchair, taking up time and resources. They felt stupid, because they knew they could walk. They just couldn't cope with a 60 minute security queue, or airstairs, or a last minute gate change or late notice gate assignment.
The nature of the solution from the airlines is to provide for the lowest common denominator.
So when you see someone who was loaded and unloaded with assistance, but seems to be able to walk unaided later, bear in mind that the wheelchair is usually the *only* option made available to them, regardless of how individual their real support needs are.