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In a previous article The pitfalls of disabled travel I discussed the difficulty in travelling whilst in a wheelchair and the implications of getting enough ‘help’ in this situation.

It started me thinking of how hard it must be to get around generally in the airport in a wheelchair. It is quite simply a ‘minefield’ from start to finish.

When you enter Gatwick you are lucky enough to have a ‘ramp’ which takes you up to the level where you ‘check in’ your bags, once you reach this part obviously you have to negotiate customs, that in itself must be a task having to offload all your belongings and as we all know, you practically have to ‘undress’ before you are able to go through, this must be very difficult for some disabled passengers.

The lifts in the airports are another thing to contemplate, quite often they are out of order, the general public will think nothing of filling up a lift, even though they are fully able to go up the escalator, I have watched with much annoyance many a time, a disabled individual battling to get into a lift in amongst a crowd of people, it must be very frustrating.  I think this should really be taken into consideration and maybe we should simply only allow people in wheelchairs, or parents with pushchairs to use the lifts, this would cut down on the congestion no doubt.

Boarding the plane, seems to me, another obstacle, I realize that the airlines do try to ‘board’ wheelchair users first and parents with pushchairs, but it doesn’t always happen, and on more than one occasion I have seen the pure frustration on people’s faces having to battle to board the plane, whist dealing with the ‘bun fight’ and people pushing and shoving, there has to be a better plan for these passengers.