Disabled passenger forced by Japanese airline to crawl up stairs to board plane

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Guardian News


Vanilla Air apologises after staff prevent friends from assisting member of a disability non-profit organisation

Justin McCurry in Tokyo
Wednesday 28 June 2017 20.35 EDT


An airline in Japan has apologised to a disabled passenger who was forced to crawl up a flight of stairs to board his plane.

Hideto Kijima, who uses a wheelchair, had to hoist himself from the runway at a tiny airport on the resort island of Amami up to the aircraft door, after staff at Vanilla Air refused to allow his friends to carry him aboard.

Kijima, who is paralysed from the waist down, has used 200 airports in 158 countries but said this was the first time he had been refused help boarding a flight.

The 44-year-old said he had been told before the flight to Osaka that it was not equipped with lifts to carry passengers with disabilities on to the plane. Vanilla Air is a budget airline affiliated with All Nippon Airways.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/29/disabled-passenger-forced-japanese-airline-vanilla-crawl-up-stairs-board-plane

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. That is horrible. How could they be so heartless?

[iluvtennis]

2. Agree. What's happening to human compassion.

[Rhiannon12866]

3. I agree! This is just awful!

What is wrong with these people??

[Bayard]

4. I could see that happening in this country

But I thought Japan was more civilized.

[Igel]

5. I have trouble imagining it happening in this country.

Haven't seen an airport that primitive since, well ... Maybe Prague in '93.

This wasn't Japan. It was a small island. Japanese staff prevented friends from helping.

Notice some details: He's in his 40s and has been to 157 airports countries. It doesn't mention that he's independently wealthy or what job he has that would take him to so many different countries.

Plus he's picked a truly strange place for his last visit, using a non-name budget airline at the one place in their route where they don't have lifts, one that happens to be the one airline going to that airport with such a safety policy.

What are the odds, you'd say?

I'd say pretty much 100%. Oh, given the information you were told in the story, nearly 0%. (My suspicions would have pushed the number quite a bit above 0%). There's a bit of information missing and information determines the odds you'd calculate (or guess at).

What we aren't told matters. You cherry pick data and you miss the news.

http://www.definitelyable.com/speaker/kiji-hideto-kijima/

It's also highly likely, I'd assume, that he went there in order to get a news story. That went there, that he set himself up after doing a bit of research to figure out where, exactly, he'd be able to get discriminated against, not just knowing that's how he'd be treated but in order to get treated that way in order to provoke outrage. It's what gives some people joy.

And it's not like his going there even got the airline to change: Lifts are already being installed, and if he'd shown up a few months later there'd have been no story at all. This was a time-critical bit of travel on his part. Now perhaps his research didn't extend so far as to ask if a problem he'd found was being remedied. Not his thing, probably: Inquisitors and hanging judges seldom seek out exculpatory evidence.

(I seriously don't like being manipulated by language and selective-fire news stories. Advocacy journalism for corporations is called "advertising," and I don't care if they're non-profit or for-profit. I'm not sure how I feel about his activities being part of a Qatari initiative. Sounds like a good initiative, but while inquisitions may start off well they often need to justify their existence by seeking out ever more minor sins on ever-slimmer evidence.)

[snooper2]

6. No, that is exactly the wrong type of "everything wrong with the West" thinking that a segment have

There are fucking assholes in every corner of the World. Maybe not the humans currently in Antarctica, but that is possible as well. The one guy you don't want to run into when grabbing a new propane tank.

But no, The US has for the most part pretty decent people in it along with the bad. Go to Russia, you'll find assholes everywhere. Go to Sudan, a bunch of pricks. Go to Bali- you'll find scammers and punks. And yes, even in Japan there are a good number of assholes.

[virgogal]

7. You don't have much confidence in your country.

I do. The USA is very disability friendly.

Japan is not more civilized,by the way----it is a very closed society with virtually no immigration.

You might want to do some homework.

[Bayard]

9. I'm thinking of recent incidents where passengers were manhandled

In the U.S. And now there's the travel ban in its most recent incarnation.

[geek tragedy]

8. Spirit Airlines needs to raise its game--there's a new contender for the worst airline title nt