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ARCHIVED - Wheelchair user humiliated on Ryanair flight to Spain
The passenger was removed from the Mallorca-bound flight and blamed for delaying other travellers
When Gary Scholes, a 40-year-old wheelchair user, booked a long-awaited holiday to sunny Spain, the last thing he and his family expected was to be left “humiliated and disgusted” when he was booted off the flight at Manchester Airport. Well used to travelling, Gary’s family checked in online with Ryanair well in advance and indicated that he required special assistance, and expected no problems.
However, when the holidaymakers arrived at the departure gate, there was no sign of the pre-booked wheelchair assistance and the flight attendants informed Gary that, as they didn’t have an aisle seat for him, he would have to be “unboarded.”
Gary’s sister Danielle, from West Yorkshire, explained how the situation unfolded:
"When we booked on my brother you can log that they require special assistance. We booked this weeks ago so they will have had lots of notice.
"We got to the boarding queue and Gary and his fiancé were waiting at the desk. When we got on the flight they hadn’t been let on yet. Then we got a call and he said that he was being unboarded from the flight.
"They said they didn’t have an aisle chair for him. This is unacceptable anyway because we alerted them that he was in a wheelchair. But he was just being ignored. Nobody gave him a proper explanation. It was like nobody cared. Him and his fiancé were really upset."
Rather than losing the money for all of the flights, the rest of Gary’s family had no choice but to carry on without him and his partner; right before take-off, the wheelchair user’s dad managed to book them on a later flight, to the costly tune of almost 1,000 euros.
To add insult to injury, Danielle claims that the pilot announced to the entire plane that all the luggage had to be unloaded to find Gary’s bags, implying that he and his family were responsible for delaying the flight.
"It was very uncomfortable that we were put in this position. I am just appalled,” she added.
Both Manchester Airport and Ryanair have denied responsibility for the mortifying blunder, with the airline claiming that the special assistance is provided by a separate company, ABM, who “failed to provide the mobility equipment required by this passenger which resulted in him missing his flight.”
Image: Flickr
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