Despite calls to improve, air travel is still a nightmare for many with disabilities
Anxiety, dread, humiliation — even potential injury. For many people with disabilities, these are part of the routine of airline travel, from getting to the airport gate to getting on and off the plane.
In 2018, Congress demanded that airlines and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) make flying better for people with disabilities — but three years later, NPR has found, passengers report that the same problems keep happening over and over.
On a trip last year, Heather Leiterman, who is blind, was told by a TSA agent to take the harness, collar and leash off her guide dog, a black Labrador named Coastie. She explained to the agent that to do so would mean she'd lose control of the animal.
"That's how they know they're working. When the harness is on, they're working. When the harness is off, that's when they're just a dog."
But the agent insisted — even though the TSA's own procedures say those items "do not require removal" for screening. "He was very hostile," Leiterman says, and threatened not to let her on the plane if she didn't comply.
When she called the TSA customer service line the next day, she says, the officer on the phone refused to take her complaint. "He said, 'If the officer told you, you need to take this off your dog, you needed to take it off your dog.'"
"Stepping into an airport, I feel
