Disability campaigner says her ‘worst fear came true’ as wheelchair breaks during flight

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A disability rights advocate has accused Ryanair of breaking her wheelchair during her journey from Dublin to Amsterdam.

Niamh Ní Hoireabhaird said her “worst fear came true” on Tuesday (30 August) when the electric wheelchair she relies on was found to be damaged after the flight.

Passengers cannot take electric wheelchairs or mobility scooters into aircraft cabins. They have to use mechanical airport wheelchairs until theirs are returned to them when they reach their destinations.

Ms Ní Hoireabhaird said the damage caused to her wheelchair that she discovered on arrival at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, has left her dependent on others, with little support from Ryanair’s customer service.

She had flown from Dublin to Amsterdam with the airline to start her second year of a journalism master’s degree in the city.

“Up until I got on the plane my wheelchair was working. But, when I got off, it was turning on but showing up an error screen – so I knew something was wrong,” she told The Independent.

“I’ve had problems with lost baggage before, so I knew to go to the desk at the airport. But the flight had been delayed by around an hour and 10 minutes, and then special assistance staff [at Schiphol] took a while to get me off the plane.

“So, by the time I collected my bags, it was 11pm and the Ryanair desk was closed.

“I knew that would create a problem for me. When you fill out Ryanair’s report form online, you need to fill out a report number from speaking to them at the desk.”

She says the wire that connects the electric system on her wheelchair to the wheels appears to have been severed during her journey.

But when she contacted Ryanair’s customer service, she could neither get through to a real person nor select her damaged mobility device as the problem, she said.

“The person I spoke to on Twitter direct messages – I assume it is a person, but it felt more like a bot,” she said.

“They sent me the claim form for lost or damaged baggage but they don’t seem to understand that this is not damaged baggage, these are my legs.”

The customer service representative told Ms Ní Hoireabhaird that Ryanair would respond to her enquiry within seven working days, “which could be into the week after next”. She said that, in the meantime, she’s reliant on friends at university, and her boyfriend who is visiting, to get around.

“I don’t have the time to sit around and wait for a response from Ryanair. I live in the same building as some people from my master’s course, and my boyfriend came with me for a few days, but I don’t want to be relying on my friends 24/7,” she said.

“Today was the introduction to our course, and I was very worried about missing it.

“Thankfully my friends offered to help me get there, but still I feel like such a burden.”

Sharing her story on Twitter, Ms Ní Hoireabhaird was flooded with accounts from other wheelchair users who had suffered technical difficulties after handing their mobility aid over during a flight.

“I’ve heard so many horror stories of airlines damaging or misplacing other wheelchairs, leaving the wheelchair-users stranded in another country, so I’ve always been aware it could easily happen to me too,” she tweeted.

“I would have been stuck and alone in the airport last night if I had not been with my boyfriend. But he isn’t a wheelchair technician, so the only thing we could do was to head home.

“The guy who usually fixes my chair’s motor is based in the next village over in Ireland, so I’m without any of my usual supports here. I’m hoping a bike shop can sort me out – even just temporarily.”

She said that, going on the amount of stories she hears from fellow wheelchair users, she is surprised that there’s no official way to report such cases or to get swift assistance from an airline. The options seem to be lost or damaged baggage.

Ms Ní Hoireabhaird told The Independent: “I understand that accidents do happen, of course they do, but airlines have a choice to either help the customer or disregard that problem.

“It’s a very common problem, but there’s no mechanism by which we can report a damaged mobility device, and there definitely should be.”

The Independent has contacted Ryanair for comment.

In July, a man shared a video that showed the damage caused to his 10-year-old son’s £11,000 wheelchair during their easyJet flight from Milan to Lisbon.

Barnabe Freixo had said that he and his son Zorion, who has Duchenne muscular dystrophy, were “distraught” that the wheelchair was rendered unusable, and claimed that luggage handlers had broken the electrical connectors in attempting to take wheels off.

Last year, a woman filmed a video of her friend Geeg DeFiebre crying after her wheelchair was allegedly broken by Delta Air Lines during her flight between New York and Phoenix, Arizona.

Under EU, UK, and US law, passengers whose mobility aids are damaged or lost by airlines are entitled to compensation.