among the things that people with disabilities cannot do normally or do with great difficulty is being able to travel by plane. Such an everyday act can turn into an unpleasant situation full of mishaps and small struggles. How would the reader feel if he had to take a transoceanic flight lying on top of his relatives because there are no adapted seats? It is one of the anecdotes unfortunately collected by Marta Morera, a young woman from Tàrrega (Lleida) who collects signatures so that the aviation authorities recognize the inequality she suffers from and take measures.
Marta is 31 years old and has been in a wheelchair since she was 15. A "malpractice" in a spinal cord operation caused him pentaplegia (tetraplegia with exclusive neck and head mobility that requires assisted breathing) for which he requires help for everything. This young woman tries not to let her physical difficulties close the doors to seeing the world, but they don't make it easy for her. "On the last flights I had to experience very unpleasant situations". This is the headline of the text with which he asks that the airlines and aviation authorities address the inequality he suffers from.
Marta has lived through everything and complains about many things: the narrow corridors that do not allow the passage of wheelchairs and the size of the toilets, where it is already impossible to access precisely through the corridors of the ship. Marta, who has studied marketing and aspires to be a community manager, explains that she had to reach the seat suspended in a harness.
One of the last episodes this September was what encouraged her to start collecting signatures: she had to fly to New York lying on top of her brother and mother. The tourist class seats do not recline very much, which prevents her from being able to travel sitting down, as she has no control over her body due to her disability. He asked for a solution by paying a small difference to have a more reclining seat and was offered to fly in a different class, paying 4,000 euros. He is outraged at having to pay for a ticket "which cost us the whole trip".
This young woman would like everything to be "easier" and not so "chaotic". And he regrets that on a plane trip "your disabilities are pointed out". It proposes that airlines have the obligation to offer adapted seats and that the price of Business class is more affordable for a person with reduced mobility. Since collecting signatures, he has received many testimonies from people who denounce situations of discrimination: the size of the toilets is the most repeated.
Berta Domínguez, who a few months ago exposed her struggle as MIR with quadriplegia, had to pay to fly to Argentina in a seat that allowed her to raise her legs even though she has a medical report that warns of the risk of voltage drop Like Marta, Berta is willing to make a common front for the dignity of people like them.
Also from the Spanish Council for the Defense of Disability and Dependency (Ceddd) they explain that they receive complaints like those of Marta or Berta, especially from low-cost airlines, points out its president, Albert Campadabal. And he regrets that the barriers that a person with a disability must jump to get to a plane are multiple, they start "long before" arriving at the boarding gate and depend on the disability. For example, Campadabal believes that companies' web pages should be more accessible for people with intellectual disabilities and "easy reading" communications. Miss more signs and pictograms at airports. The leader recalls that 10% of the population has some kind of disability and that it is "totally unworthy" to experience situations like Marta Morera's.
The Air Lines Association (ALA) recognizes the physical limitations of planes and explains that each company has a policy to "facilitate" access to planes. They point to the airport pick-up service for Persons with Reduced Mobility (PMR), in which the passenger is picked up from the time they arrive at the airport until they get on the plane, a help that "has improved a lot". But Berta Brusilovsky, an accessibility expert, laments that once the person gets inside "they leave you lying on the seat and there you have to scramble to, for example, go to the toilet, because there is no personal assistance . You have to bring it."
Brusilovsky points to some solutions that could be implemented: special seats at the back to facilitate access to the toilet and to prevent situations like the one he describes from happening: a woman who had to "crawl down the corridor until to the toilet because he didn't have help". Rocío de los Reyes is president of Ceddd Andalusia and has cerebral palsy. Her tetraparesis makes her totally dependent. And he remembers the pilgrimage by making "stops" to the toilet on a trip to the United States so that the toilet was at the other end of the plane. He describes it as "inhuman to be unable to move for eight hours" in an uncomfortable seat.
De los Reyes, married with a 20-year-old son, believes that it would be feasible for there to be a space enabled in the back to have the toilet closer. He calls for more reclining seats and points to other disability barriers, such as boarding notices, that hearing-impaired people don't hear. "It depends on which disability, you encounter one problem or another".
ALA sources explain that services have been improved "as far as possible", but that it is difficult, for example, to widen the corridor and that planes are subject to strict safety rules, so that any change entails "a long process". Berta Brusilovsky believes that everything can be fixed and although she recognizes that the plane is an expensive transport system and the space is limited, she believes that engineers should be sensitized.
With more reclining seats, the trip would improve a lot for people like Marta, this traveler acknowledges. It has already managed to collect more than 48,000 signatures. But he explains that in order to file a collective lawsuit against the airlines, he needs 50 people to report the situation. "I'm getting angry and frustrated... We've got it complicated enough...", he regrets.
