20 Passengers Use Wheelchairs To Board Early On Southwest, Then Walk Off The Aircraft Fine On Arrival https://viewfromthewing.com/20-pass...t-then-walk-off-the-aircraft-fine-on-arrival/ If you need assistance contact your airline in advance and they’ll arrange for a wheelchair. There’s officially no cost for the service although in most U.S. airports the people pushing make much of their money on tips. It’s never clear the right amount to tip. Some feel $5 is appropriate, others tip $20. There’s no medical verification needed to request this. And some people ask for the service who don’t, strictly speak, ‘need it’. When a flight has numerous passengers with wheelchair assistance on boarding, and then most of those passengers get off themselves and walk out of the terminal – walking right past the waiting wheelchairs on the jet bridge – it’s known as a “miracle flight.” Here’s one recent Southwest Airlines flight where 20 passengers used wheelchairs to board, and only 3 used them to get off. 17 passengers experienced an inflight miracle. Let’s be clear: there are certainly cases where someone might need assistance on boarding and not deplaning. But that’s also highly unlikely to be the case for 17 passengers (85% of those needing wheelchair assistance) here. In addition to the medicinal benefits of flying that cures these passengers, explanations may include a desire for: Better seating which is unique to Southwest. You’re going to get a better deal tipping a wheelchair attendant than buying Early Bird Check-in in order to get a better seat. Access to overhead bin space. If you’ve got a late boarding group there may not be overhead bin space. But board with a wheelchair and you go on early, bin space is yours. Free carry on with a basic economy fare on United. If you need priority boarding assistance you aren’t in the last boarding group, and the full-sized carry on ban on the cheapest tickets is enforced by boarding group. Priority check-in and security. But if you’re savvy enough to ask for a wheelchair you are savvy enough to get PreCheck and check-in online and do bag drop. Since the biggest benefit – seat selection, in addition to airport priority – comes when flying Southwest, it’s little surprise this is noted most in social media with Southwest flights. The reason this concerns me is that people asking for wheelchair assistance who do not need it prevents or delays people who do need assistance from getting it. If everyone at the gate showed up needing early boarding it would defeat the purpose of early boarding (‘if everyone gets early boarding then no one does’).
So the middle class can be scumbags too. there was an article about rich people in New York hiring disabled kids to go to Disney with them so they could skip the lines.
Scumbag isn't limited to any one group, it is a universal trait that permeates all people at some point. There are those that live the scumbag life and those that have their moment. Flying really seems to bring it out in people. After working for an airline long ago, I grew to really detest a lot of people and the complete stupidity, and entitlements soo many thought they deserved. If I were to generalize, I would say East Coast, and more specifically New Yorkers were the biggest bunch of entitled, know it all, loud mouth pricks I ever ran across. One of my favorite memories was watching a gate agent deal with with big shot NYC guy mouthing off, and telling her how to do her job. She let him go, and then looked up and loudly laid a great one liner on him. The 20 people behind him and those sitting in the gate area burst out laughing. He swore and said he was going to call the CEO who was his personal friend, completely mispronouncing his last name. She corrected him, and he went off on another tirade. My boss and I were standing off to the side, and were pretty much in tears laughing.
There was a travel booking site (like Kayak) called Hipmunk. They sorted hotels by what they called an "Exctasy Factor" and your flights by an "Agony Factor." Unless you are flying in the front, airline travel is an unpleasant experience.
%% Strange\DIS stock seems disabled YTD. Probably related to a FLA fight, more than NY wisdom I've been healed with miracles more than once , but not pretending to be LUV- sick in LUV.LOL LUV is up YTD, more than peanuts I did see someone get Up out of wheelchair/rather rapidly, once I was amazed , but it was a bit funny 2, She says ''DONT feel sorry for me; I was in that wheel chair for medical class''
This is one of the reasons Delta will always be #1 in my book. I was on a red-eye to the West Coast out of Atlanta way back in the day, long before 9/11, and the load was real light and I was sitting up front. There might have been 5 other people up there tops. We were all closed up and ready to push-back but the cockpit door was still open and I could kinda hear what was going on. The gate agent had called down and asked the pilots if they'd hold the push-back because they had a family inbound from a connecting flight that had got in late and since it was the last flight out could they hold off for a few minutes. They did. They opened up the door and this family gets on board, all out of breath, all greatful and everything, and it became apparent why the gate agent did this. They had this little girl, she couldn't have been more than 10, but she was obviously pretty disabled and she was in one of those motorized wheelchairs. It was all decorated too with little stuffed animals and stickers and stuff. They got them all seated in back, and I heard the pilots call the ramp to have someone come up and get that wheelchair. Well up comes one of these baggage guys with an attitude and he starts bitching because he has to redo his paperwork or something because it has a battery, the load has already been finalized, his crew is loading another airplane, it's the end of the shift, he's "had a long day" and "that damn thing is heavy and I'll have to pull someone off of flight *** to help me carry it down unless I take it to the elevator all the way down at gate *** which was where it was supposed to go in the first place." Ya know in life, there's certain things that you'll never forget, and what that flight attendant said next to this guy is one of those things for me. She was no spring chicken, and let me tell ya... she was not from Atlanta lol, not by a long-shot. She was pure NY or NJ and she got pissed. Out it came. She looked at this guy and my god did she squash him like a bug. In her strongest Brooklyn accent that she did in a quasi-whisper... she goes----- "You know what pal... I'm sorry you had a long day and you have to deal with this wheelchair for a few minutes. But you know what... there's a little girl in the back back there... and she's gonna have to deal with it her entire life. Now do you want me to have the cockpit call a supervisor because I've had a long day too... and her and I want to leave." He didn't say a word, he disengaged whatever the drive thing is on those and rolled it out the door. It was one of the most touching and powerful deliveries I think I have ever heard. And after an hour or so in the air, and a few gin and tonics later... I told her that too. Wherever you're at today, maybe in heaven(?)... here's to ya lady. I bet that ramp guy never forgot either.