David Gillon

I've commented for news stories before, but Air Traffic Regulator has been doing Half a Job by Ignoring Airlines may be the first time I've created one. I spotted that the Civil Aviation Authority has been monitoring airport performance against the EU legislation on air travel for disabled people, but pointed out to Disability News Service, who'd covered the airport report, that the legislation covers airlines as well as airports, and CAA aren't checking that. I may not be the CAA's favourite person at the moment. The good thing is it may actually encourage a change in policy.

And then I escalated to criticising IATA, the airline industry's trade association. They released a resolution on Friday, admitting they have a problem carrying disabled people (good), and a particular problem carrying wheelchairs (double good), and a set of proposals to deal with the issues. Which look great. Unless you happen to know the treaties governing air travel, in which case you can tell that what they really want is to stop any airline being compelled to offer full compensation for damaged or destroyed wheelchairs (the Montreal Convention currently limits compensation to £1500, which is completely inadequate). So I  tweeted out my analysis almost before they released the thing, which they've now promised to respond to, and in the meantime I've turned it into my first blog post in a couple of years:

An Analysis of the IATA Resolution on "Passengers With Disabilities"

BTW, if anyone hasn't heard, the US airlines have been required to release stats on damaged wheelchairs since the start of the year (should have started a couple of years ago, but Trump), and it turns out they're damaging or destroying over 30 a day. On the worst airline, there is a 1 in 5 chance of your chair being damaged on a round trip. And this is in the US, with enforcement of disability stuff by the FAA under the Air Carrier Access Act which far exceeds any kind of fine or sanction levied elsewhere, so the rest of the world is probably worse.

In other news I'm pissed off that I won't be at Worldcon. I had hoped to arrange a last minute trip during July, but family stuff made it impossible. I'm hoping I'll be slightly less pissed off once it's over, but that's not guaranteed.