Airline Accessiblity Issues

I have a ridiculous amount of stuff to write about and process.

I'll start with the least interesting bitching about the airport / airline situation. My trip home was really horrible, and the only parts that went OK were because of a lucky meeting with a stranger who happened to be an extremely nice person.

I've actually traveled by airplane independently a lot. Especially after moving to Oregon, with my family on the opposite coast in Maine, I flew alone about twice a year for a while. I can navigate airports; I'm good with maps and there is a consistent System to air travel, a predictability. Or there was.

Unfortunately, it's become quite obvious that my days of independent air travel are quite over. Air travel is no longer accessible to me due to both the changes for "security" and the cluster fuck that is air scheduling these days. It's quite appalling how expensive air travel is in the US considering what a crappy service it is. A train ticket is a fraction of the price of an airplane, and has better service (and unfortunately takes too long to be practical at times).

So, security. First, security agents are not trained to be able to deal with the difference between "shifty character" and "autistic body language." If security tries to talk to me, I don't have sufficient social communication to respond properly. Terror of being spoken to makes me even more nervous and prone to behaving strangely. This makes for a potentially very dangerous situation.

Worse for me though is how many steps I need to go through now to make it through security. I was OK with putting my coat and bags on the belt and stepping through the metal detector, and grabbing my coat and bags on the other side. That was fine. But now I have to: 1) take my computer out and put it in a bin, 2) take my toiletries (which I must have remembered to pack in 3 oz or less containers and then put inside a quart ziplock bag) and put them in a separate bin from my computer, 3) take off my coat, jacket, and apparently in some airports but not others scarf, but not my hat (WTF?), which must go in a separate bin from my computer, 4) take off my shoes and also put in a separate bin from my computer, 5) make sure my water bottle is empty, 6) finally step through the metal detector, 7) somehow reassemble all of that back on the other side, in some designated area (if one exists) which will be completely different for every airport, really really FAST so as not to further enrage the angry stressed out people next in line.

This is too many steps, and too much unpredictability for me. I can't get all of the steps right and get confused, and need to use a written checklist to manage at all. This looks strange, and takes excessive amounts of time. My gross motor skills can be poor, and it takes me forever to put everything back together. My ability to recognize objects is poor, and it takes me forever even to find my own items again, recognize what they're for, and what to do with them next.

So, security is something I need assistance with now. Every time. I need someone to meet me at ticketing, and take me through security. This does not please me AT ALL.

So the second problem with air travel is that more often than not, the flights get mixed up, or too full, or something else happens that makes my itinerary change. Years ago I could expect that the ticket I bought would be the one I'd end up with. Now I'm lucky if one leg of the trip works out like it was supposed to. There is no part of this I can cope with alone.

The third problem is that the airports have grown increasingly crowded, and the people both increasingly LOUD and increasingly angry / stressed. Too much / too sharp / bad times. I get overloaded really fast and then start losing brain function. There are more chances someone will attempt to interact with me. Always bad.

So my flight to DC I was with KMD and she handled quite a lot of situations for me, serving as Translator and advocate, which was sorely needed as the airline personnel were dreadful. Everything from arguing about the need to help me with security to not seating KMD and I together even though we'd explicitly asked, and her needing to trade seats with people at the last minute.

My flight home though was alone. KMD and Scott went with me to the airport, and we found that my flight was delayed, I'd miss my transfer, and of the options only one could be guaranteed. That one was of course much later. There was a huge mess getting through security, and then we waited. I got to spend more time with Scott while KMD tried to make the proper arrangements, like to get me pre-boarded. KMD met this woman in while waiting in line and got the woman to agree to help me out and got her ticket changed to sit by me. KMD and Scott have to go, and the woman is awesome at making sure I manged.

When we finally got to Chicago, there ended up being a nearly five hour wait in the airport. I was already pretty far gone from the conference and not functioning well at all, and well past the point of non-verbal (I'd been typing / writing since the DC airport). This wonderful woman stayed with me the whole time. She was amazing. She also ended up being really intelligent, interesting, and a marvelous companion. We got into some really wonderful conversation, which, um, almost caused me to miss my flight *grin*

I did get on the flight but missed the pre-boarding. At that point I was tilting back and forth over the edge of shutdown, and very little made sense. The stewardesses were doing things with my bags and it was confusing so I asked them (writing) to slow down, to tell me what was happening. They were then like, no, we'll do this other thing instead. Everything got super confusing and I missed big chunks. There were angry people on the plane and near me. The stewardess kept saying, "I put your bag there," but I didn't know what "there" meant, and I kept trying to get her to read my notebook where I'd written, "what is the number of bin where you put my bag" but she wouldn't read it, and kept angrily repeating, "there, I put it there!" It was so bad. "I was supposed to preboard but it got messed up," I remember saying, but that was unrelated to anything I needed to communicate. I got pushed around both verbally and physically, and my things were taken from me. I demanded I be able to take items out of my back pack first, and grabbed my pillow and computer.

I got in the seat and the horrible business men next to me started talking about how terrible it was they would have to sit by me. They started bartering over who would be in the seat directly next to me. "Well, at least we're on a flight to Portland," they consoled themselves.

I sat seething, wishing I had access to enough resources to let them know I was fully cognizant of what they were saying, and they should be extremely careful of their assumptions about other human beings. But I was too done for, motionless and mute.

Needless to say, the careful scripts KMD had given to me for asking my seat mate when to turn on my iPod, etc. remained unused and I just guessed for myself. There was no way I was going to engage with such pricks.

I finally got home at 11:30 PM Pacific time. I'd been traveling for 14 hours straight, without a break, in toxic environments. The fantastic woman who KMD found to stay with me is the only reason why I made it home.

The airlines are supposed to provide assistance for people who need it. This includes children traveling alone, and disabled passengers. In order to get that assistance, it seems one needs to have the negotiation, advocacy, and communication skills of a UN ambassador.

There is something very wrong with this. What if I'd been a 6 year old, or someone with Altzheimers? Would they have been completely abandoned by staff who can't wait to get as far away as possible? Who would have made sure they got on the plane on time? Who would have helped them make their connection? Would a 6 year old have been treated as I had been by the stewardesses?

I plan on doing a Full Investigation as soon as this last week of school is over. Because the experience I had was really unacceptable.