Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Seeing the way to change

Ryanair has decided to revise its policy on limiting its flights to four disabled passengers per plane, a little bit anyway. Recently the airline took a group of nine visually impaired individuals off of a flight because the group exceeded the airline's limit of four disabled passengers. The move provoked outrage. You'll remember that Ryanair drew fire last year for charging for wheelchair use. Last week, the airline announced that "vision-impaired passengers traveling with sighted companions will no longer have to advise the airline in advance. These travelers will also not be included in the airline's safety limit of four disabled passengers per flight," the BBC reported. Ryanair head of customer services Caroline Green characterized the change as "common sense." True, but so would be reconsideration of the whole only four disabled people policy that somehow suggests that disabled passengers aboard endanger other passengers.

-- Ryanair's press release

-- John at Eurapart is encouraged by the move, but favors the quota remaining in place. He does make the good point that "a visually impaired person may well fare better than average in a smoke filled cabin." Let's call that when disability becomes ability.

I invite you to leave your thoughts on the quota or this issue as a comment.

2 Comments:

At 11:48 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I agree with your view on this. I'm not entirely clear on the "safety" issue. What type of safety issues arise when more than 4 disabled passengers are on a flight?

Great blog!

 
At 12:09 PM, Blogger darrenh said...

ziggi:

They cite the ability to evacuate a plane in a timely manner as the problem. More than 4 disabled people on a plan impairs their ability to do this, they claim. But isn't the real issue that perhaps it impairs their ability to evacuate given their current operations and resources? This company has a poor track record on disability issues.

Thanks for the comment

 

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