“Once, it happens. Twice, I’m nice. But each time, it’s inadmissible!” Every summer for the past six years, Audrey Lefèvre has returned from vacation without a wheelchair, because she was injured at the airport during transport in the warehouse. Last Tuesday on her return from Bastia (Corsica), the same old story of hers: she rediscovered her chair bent forcibly on the baggage arrival mat at Orly.
“I just want to fly like everyone else”
“I wish I could fly like everyone else,” shouts the young woman from Oise, who did a very shared thread on Twitter. “They don’t realize the impact it has on me. It’s already complicated enough to be disabled, if we are also deprived of what is most precious to us… From now on I am very upset, I can’t even leave my house or go to work.”
In fact, the almost 27-year-old absolutely needs her electric wheelchair to get around. Since birth, she has suffered from Ullrich syndrome, a myopathy that prevents her from moving the muscles of her legs and arms: congenital muscular dystrophy.
Typically, he explains, the baggage handlers put the chair unfolded in a box at the height of the oversized luggage so as not to damage it during transport, and return it to him personally instead of on the conveyor belt, where it doesn’t pass. unfolded.
But it has been six times in a row that after making the trip to Bastia-Paris with Air France, his wheelchair has become bent, and therefore damaged. However, this time, the young woman herself had taken it upon herself to write in black on white, in French and English, “don’t bow down, thank you” for the attention of her staff. And for good reason, such an electric wheelchair is very expensive: between 7,500 and 8,000 euros.
“They told me: ‘we prefer to buy a chair and have temporary workers than qualified personnel'”
“I can’t do more than that! It’s exhausting and unacceptable,” breathes Audrey Lefèvre, who now plans to file a complaint. Because every time, she goes through lengthy administrative procedures to prove that her chair was damaged during the flight, so the airline agrees to send her a new chair and possibly compensate her.
“Once you have established a complaint file on the site, you must contact them online, then by phone and wait for them to contact us again. It may take 3-6 months before Air France acknowledges its responsibility and accept compensation. And again the last time they agreed because I threatened them with a lawsuit.”
The damages verified and paid by Air France
“Abusing a disabled person’s means of transportation is like abusing someone’s legs,” explains Sandra Bossard, president of the French association of professionals for the accessibility of people with disabilities (AFPAPH), to BFMTV.com. “Your freedom is being attacked,” she adds, deploring “the cruel lack of staff training in the different types of transport, which is often at the root of the lack of accessibility for people with reduced mobility.”
“Transport accessibility for people with disabilities is an issue that no one takes very seriously,” Sandra Bossard still laments. “More and more companies are using third-party service providers for baggage handling, which also allows them to absolve themselves of responsibility in these types of cases.”
Air France, contacted by BFMTV.com, confirms that Audrey Lefèvre’s wheelchair was damaged during a flight with the company. “Saphir service is now in contact with the customer to follow up on their file. The damage was noticed during the upload process, but we still don’t know at this stage precisely when the device was damaged.”
Finally, the airline specifies that the wheelchair incident that occurred in the summer of 2021 occurred with a competing company, and says that it has no information on previous incidents that would have occurred with the young woman. The young woman, however, confirms that each of them was with Air France, and that she was forced to take another company last year because her initial flight with Air France had been postponed. She points out that, however, it was Air France that supported her expenses afterwards.
Source: BFM TV
