Saint Christopher

Hi... I'm new to FlyerTalk and was wondering if there are other Deaf FTers out there? How many of you are out there?

Wiggums

I'm one.

MrAndy1369

Count me in. =)

DeafFlyer

Me 2.

falconea

I;m only partially deaf - does that count? Can't live without my HAs.

Audrey

pinkcat

not deaf but I teach high school and use BSL (badly) when I have hearing impaired kiddies in the class

usa18dca

Is deaf and works in the airlines.

ArizonaGuy

I'm neither deaf nor hearing. I'm moderately to severely (and profoundly in two frequencies on the right) hearing impaired. I lost my hearing due to ototoxicity during cancer treatment 10 years ago, I was 19. But I wear high power hearing aids, and have been mostly just fine since.

I am an ASL student, beginning my 2nd term shortly. My girlfriend is a language geek so we're taking courses together.

Anyone else hearing aid wearers, or have cochlear implants? This should probably be it's own thread, but I'll start here for the moment. I'm curious about others' experiences with getting exit rows on aircraft. BA flat out denied me on a PHX-LHR flight upon noticing my hearing aids. Other times, I've gotten bulkhead rows by the door on a 744 with no trouble. US, UA, and AA have never given me trouble. All the FAA requirement says is that a passenger in the row must be able to hear oral instructions, as far as I know. I can hear them quite well with hearing aids, even in noise or chaotic environments.

Wiggums

They have moved me from the exit rows because of my deafness. They did ask if I could understand.. I said yes.. then she said, "Through the P.A.?" Ah, nope... off I went.

Never been denied though!

DeafFlyer

Can you hear anything without them? I was a hearing aid user and sometimes batteries die at the wrong time, or sweat causes them to not work well, or they even get knocked out of my ears on occassions like plane crashes. If any of that happened could you still hear well enough? I think if you're honest, it does kind of make sense, just a little bit.

ArizonaGuy

I am only moderately impaired on the left, the severe to profound is on the right. If it's a male voice, I'll most likely hear it, certainly in my left ear. Female voices are much more difficult, so speakers need to be loud - not exactly a problem in an emergency.

And I always manage to hear my girlfriend nagging me in the mornings before I "put my ears on" - but maybe I'm just trained like Pavlov's dogs to respond to that? Don't tell her I said that.

DeafFlyer

They don't know that much about hearing loss, and that there are varying degrees of loss, so it's not a surprise that they act that way, when seeing your aids.

My hands are sealed.

b1513

You're a funny guy these past 2 days, DeafFlyer, between this post and the weatherman post on OMNI, I had two good laughs.

Bobette

aslsigner

I'm not deaf but my my wife has a cochlear implant and works in her school district with families of young children that have a hearing loss. I've done decades of philanthropic work with the deaf and hard-of-hearing.

I decided on my handle because while my wife is verbal with her CI, we enjoy signing.

KiwiSurfer

Heya,

Good to see some Deaf people here! :-)

My name is James and I'm from New Zealand.

I mainly fly on QF for domestic flights within NZ. That oficially makes me a traitor for not flying NZ, our national carrier! *winks* My reason for flying QF is because of their fantastic rewards programme and cheaper fares. DJ (Pacific Blue -- an offshoot of Virgin Airlines) has just got on the scene here and so far they're quickly gaining a reputation for delays -- the majority of their flights seem to depart >30mins late including my most recent DJ flight departing 1h45m late!

Anyway QF are pretty good at keeping me informed when things are not going as per schedule. One such instance was the time there was fog at AKL airport putting all flights in/out of the airport on hold. I asked one QF guy what was going on and he kept me informed throughout the whole thing -- basically just every 30mins or so relaying what was being announced over the PA etc regarding my AKL-CHC flight. The flight eventually departed about 3 hours or so behind schedule, not that I blame QF for an act-of-god event! ;-)

Another nice thing about QF is that some of their staff know a bit of SL. One time I checked in with a group of Deaf people going to AKL from CHC. When we completed our checkin the lady informed us our flight was 20mins late (due to late inbound from ZQN) and signed 'thank you' to us. A nice touch I thought!

NZ on the other hand could do with improvements, from what I've heard from other NZ passengers. One instance was when a Deaf friend and an interpreter was checking in to a NZ domestic flight to CHC or WLG. They were talking to each other (in SL obviously) and the check-in agent, for some reason, did not like this. She basically asked them "to stop moving your hands"! Of course my Deaf friend took exception to this. Fourtently nothing too bad came out of this -- but does make the point that check-in staff need better Deaf Awareness training.

But on the other hand all QF check in staff in New Zealand are provided by NZ then surely they all receive the same training (apart from QF specific training for those working at the QF desks). Seems odd to me that the people at QF desks deal with Deaf customers better than the ones at NZ desks -- surely NZ would put their best staff on their own desks and put the crap ones on the QF desks. Obviously this is not the case!

Another story with NZ was when I was on a AKL-WLG-CHC flight. Upon stop over in WLG me and my friend chose to stay on the plane to avoid missing it when it departed to CHC. This women came up to us and yelled in loud voices "ARE YOU DEAF?"! I said yes, and no need to yell. She asked if we required any special support. "Um no, thanks" with an akward smile was the response.

I understand that they want to make sure that we are comfortable etc, but I don't really see how Deaf passengers need 'support'. We just need to be informed when things don't go to plan (such as coming and see me personally if the plane is diverted due to weather issues for example) and that's about it.

Same flight as above I noticed my boarding pass had the word "DEAF" on it, and I eventually discovered pretty much all my subsequent flights with NZ had the comment on my BP as well. So far NZ is the only airline to do this -- BA/DJ/EK/QF all do not do this in my experience. Do any other airlines do this?

Some of my Deaf friends swear by NZ despite the above stories, which I find utterly amazing, but I'm slowing converting them to QF! Usually just one QF flight does the trick -- and they're hooked forever!

I recently flown on QF/BA AKL-SYD-LHR//LHR-MAD//MAD-LHR-SYD-AKL. The only issues I had was on a BA flight back to Australia between LHR-SYD via BKK. At BKK I got off the plane and did not bring my carry on baggage with me. Since I could not hear the PA I did not realise that I was supposed to bring it with me. What happened was that when the cabin was being cleaned they took my bag away. Fourtently when I reboarded the plane I discovered the lost bag and promptly informed a FA who explained the rule to me and ran off to find the bag. She arrived back about 5-10mins later (rather red in the face and panting!) with my carry on bag! I apologiesed -- and said that I had learnt a very important flight lesson!

That happened to me once on a CHC-AKL flight -- can't remember if it was a NZ or QF flight. I was preassigned a exit door seat for some reason. Fourtently I didn't mind which seat I got since it was a spacious 737 so I just swapped the seat with my mum. Mum got the exit door seat and I got the one next to it. Can understand how annoying it would be for a tall Deaf person though!

Hope my post had lots of food for thought.

Merry Christmas,
James