(AND YES, TWO INCHES CAN CHANGE EVERYTHING.)
I travel a LOT for speaking, which means I have become slightly neurotic about flying with my power wheelchair.
Okay. Maybe more than slightly. 😂 About 30 minutes before boarding, I get out of my chair and my delightful caregiver begins our little pre-flight mechanical engineering project. 🔧 We remove what we can, lower what we can, secure everything and get my power wheelchair down to approximately
35 inches tall. Why 35 inches?
Because after years of flying, talking to airport ground crews, studying aircraft specifications and generally learning WAY more about cargo holds than any passenger should ever need to know, I know which aircraft my chair can fit into. ✈️ You can see in the photos below exactly what I mean.
THEN I GOT A PHONE CALL 📞
I’m flying internationally next month, so while filling out American Airlines’ mobility-device information, I entered my wheelchair height: 35 inches.
An American representative called and told me the allowable height was now 33 inches. Two inches.
That may sound incredibly insignificant. But when those two inches determine whether your legs get to travel with you, they become pretty damn significant. ♿️😳
And here is where it gets especially interesting. American Airlines publishes a cargo-door height of 33 inches for its Boeing 737-800.
Delta publishes 35 inches for its Boeing 737-800.
Same aircraft model. ✈️ Two different published measurements. 📏 And somehow the wheelchair user is supposed to make sense of what those two inches mean at the gate.
WHY THIS MATTERS ♿️
My wheelchair is not luggage.
It is how I move. It is how I work. It is how I live independently. If I land in another country and my chair doesn’t, we have a considerably bigger problem than somebody losing a Samsonite. 😂
Yet once again, the burden falls on the disabled passenger to figure everything out:
📏 Know the exact dimensions of your wheelchair
✈️ Know the aircraft operating your flight
🔧 Know how far your chair can safely be broken down
📋 Know the airline’s policies
🙏 And then hope everyone at the airport interprets those policies the same way
THE DISABILITY TAX 💸♿️
The disability tax isn’t always money. Sometimes you pay it in time, planning, research, stress and an absolutely ridiculous amount of mental energy just to do something everyone else gets to do without thinking twice.
And apparently I can now add Boeing cargo-door analyst to my résumé. 😂✈️ I don’t expect every airplane to accommodate every wheelchair. Physics is physics.
But I do expect policies around mobility devices to be clear, consistent and transparent — especially when a couple of inches can determine whether someone can travel at all.
Because accessibility often comes down to details. And sometimes the difference between access and exclusion is literally two inches. ♿️📏
