Hello and welcome to the ADA Distance Learning 2001 program as we kick off our new season. This series is hosted by your regional Disability and Business Technical Assistance Center. Should you have questions about today''s session or questions about the ADA in general, please feel free to call your regional Disability and Business Technical Assistance Center at (800) 949-4232. This session is currently being real-time captioned on the Great Lakes web site at www.adagreatlakes.org. As homework for today''s session, people were directed to the U.S. Department of Transportation''s air consumer web site, that can also be linked through the Great Lakes web site and the pamphlet, New Horizons: Information for the Air Traveler with a Disability. In light of the holiday season coming up and lots of travel throughout the United States and internationally, we have asked Bob Ashby to join us today to talk about the rights of people with disabilities as they access the airways. Bob is the general counsel for the U.S. Department of Transportation specializing in the Air Carrier Access Act. Hi, Bob.
Hi
Could you briefly go over for us what some of the rights of people with disabilities are as they travel via air.
Let me, if I may, give a little bit of background about the Air Carrier Access Act itself. The act goes back to the mid 1980s when the Paralyzed Veterans of America brought a lawsuit originally against the former Civil Aeronautics Board, essentially saying that the Civil Aeronautics Board regulations under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act were inadequate. That in PVA''s view airlines received significant financial assistance from the Federal Aviation Administration through air traffic control and airways facilities and therefore should have to comply with more stringent nondiscrimination requirements concerning passengers with disabilities than CAB at that time was willing to impose. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court essentially decided against PVA saying Section 504 did not apply because it wasn''t really financial assistance in the usual sense of a subsidy for airlines to take advantage of things like air traffic control. Congress reacted unusually quickly by congressional standards passing within something like 90 days of the Supreme Court decision the Air Carrier Access Act. Which at the time was a very simple one or two sentence statute that was modeled on Section 504, simply saying that no air carrier engaged in air transportation shall discriminate against passengers on the basis of disability. With that, the Department of Transportation began a regulatory negotiation involving the airlines, disability community groups, and others to try to come up with a fairly specific list of requirements for the airlines as they dealt with passengers with disabilities. The regulatory negotiation though not fully successful, did result in a fairly comprehensive regulation that was published in 1990 and that regulation, which has been amended various times and is still continuing to be amended, provides the basic list of requirements for air carriers to avoid discrimination. The kinds of requirements that we have under the Air Carrier Access Act rules and the citation legally is 14 CFR Part 382 fall into two basic categories. One category is kind of basic nondiscrimination. I should probably talk about three categories. One is basic nondiscrimination. You can''t as an airline, refuse to serve people with disabilities, for example, just because it is more trouble, less convenient, etc. unless you can make a case. It is a very difficult case to make, that transporting an individual with a disability is actually inimical to safety, they don''t use the standard we see in the ADA, but this is a standard certainly akin to the direct threat standard. Unless transporting a person with a disability would or might be inimical to the safety of a flight then one can''t deny service. Nor may an airline require advance notice simply for transporting an individual with a disability. There are certain services that an airline can ask for advance notice for. But not simply for transporting the passenger him or herself. In connection with the general nondiscrimination obligation, we make a point of saying that the fact that a passenger in some personal way may offend or annoy others, on the basis of something related to disability as opposed to some kinds of voluntary misconduct is not a ground for denying transportation or segregating an individual or anything like that. The classic example being someone who has turrets related behavior that may be quite startling or annoying to other people. But as a disability related phenomenon, that is not something that would be a ground for denying transportation to an individual with a disability. So those are examples of the general nondiscrimination side. Another one, by the way, that I should mention is probably falls into this area as well as any other, is the issue of attendants. Although I don''t think this is nearly as true as it used to be, certainly in the days before the Air Carrier Access Act it was commonly reported by persons with disabilities, they would be asked, often, seemingly quite arbitrarily, to provide an attendant or a traveling companion or whatever it might be called, even though they would not be someone who would in the normal course of business use let us say a personal care attendant. The concern of the airlines was often expressed that the individual, the passenger, might need assistance in eating or going to the bathroom or whatever as well as some concerns about safety functions during an evacuation. And in the Air Carrier Access Act as part of the general nondiscrimination portion of the rule, we said, look, basically the only reason you can require an attendant if you are the airline, is because the individual is so severely disabled that he or she cannot participate in a meaningful way on their own in an emergency evacuation of the aircraft. Carrier personnel aren''t required to act as personal care attendants, but if someone doesn''t want a personal care attendant and can do just fine without one, then the airline can''t say that they have to have somebody traveling with them for a personal care type reason. If there is a dispute between the passenger and the airline about whether an attendant is really necessary for evacuation related safety reasons, the compromise we came to was that the airline gets to have the final decision about whether that person is necessary. But if they make that decision over the objection of the passenger, then the attendant gets to ride free. So at the very least, no one is forced to pay for someone that they believe is unnecessary. The next category of things that I think I would talk about under the rule are essentially physical accessibility. I will leave aside for the moment questions of accessibility of the airport facilities themselves, we can talk about them a bit later, that involves some very complicated overlaps between the Air Carrier Access Act, Section 504, and the ADA. But when we are talking about physical accessibility to the aircraft or the accessibility of aircraft based facilities, the most important thing we are probably talking about is board assistance. How do you get on the airplane? That typically involves in a case where you have a jet-way or level loading bridge, it typically involves assistance from airline personnel in transferring from one''s own mobility device to what''s called a boarding chair or aisle chair, assistance into the aircraft, and assistance into transferring into an aircraft seat. Airplanes are not set up to allow passengers to ride in their own wheelchairs. Indeed the FAA safety rule for seat anchorage, how seats are bolted to the floor, would preclude the possibility of anyone riding in they own wheelchair in any circumstance I can foresee. So there always is going to be a transfer to an aircraft seat. And in most cases that''s going to involve in some point at effect a double transfer, from one''s own device to the boarding chair to the aircraft seat. In order to make that transfer easier and less than a flying the hump kinds of thing, we require at least on new aircraft that have come into the fleet since 1992, that half of the armrests on aisle seats on aircraft be movable-that is to say they flip up so you can have a level transfer as opposed to an over the hump transfer. The real trick we have found because oftentimes carrier personnel aren''t aware as they might be of this feature is working with carrier personnel to get placed in an aisle that has one of these or placed in a seat row that has one of those. But in fact they are very helpful and they do relieve this. I look for them every time I go on an airplane myself and a fair amount of the time I do in fact find them. The other part of boarding assistance applies primarily to smaller commuter aircraft which do not use jet-ways as a primary means of boarding. The kind of-that are known as puddle jumpers, sometimes even the medium sized regional jets where boarding is from the tarmac rather than by a loading bridge. Here we put out a rule a few years ago which requires airlines and airports to cooperate to acquire mechanical lifts so that people don''t have to be carried up the stairs on boarding chairs which is often difficult, dangerous, undignified, and sometimes flat impossible. That rule is in the process of being extended from the smallest commuter aircraft to the medium sized aircraft as we speak. That is a rule making that is in progress to expand the reach of that lift boarding requirement. There is a requirement on the largest aircraft, the so-called double aisles, the jumbo jets, 747, DC10, that kind of aircraft, again post 1992, for an accessible lavatory unit in those larger aircraft. They have enough room to accommodate the larger lavatory units and that means that in combination with an onboard aisle chair which the aircraft is required to have, an individual who has a mobility impairment can go back to the lavatory, use the lavatory in an accessible way and not have to deal with the dehydration or other kinds of issues that often arise. We don''t have a similar requirement in single aisle aircraft. That is something which I think a lot of people would like to see. We didn''t put it in essentially as a point of economic compromise with the airlines, because the airlines argue, and I think they argue fairly forcefully, that in order to install the larger lavatory unit in a single aisle aircraft, like a DC9 or 727, you would have to probably remove a row or two of seats, at least on one side of the aircraft, and that has, especially over time, some pretty significant cost consequences that the department was unwilling to take on. So at this point we do not have a requirement for accessible lavatories in the single aisle aircraft. The third category of items under the Air Carrier Access Act regulation is for lack of a better term, services. For example, when as a wheelchair user you are assisted onboard an aircraft, especially if you have a folding wheelchair or perhaps one of the newer break apart type wheelchairs that are of a size that they can be stowed in the cabin, there is indeed a requirement that space be made available for stowage of the wheelchair in the cabin in a coat closet or overhead bins or wherever it will fit. That is something that I think has continued to be troublesome over the years because again, some air carrier personnel don''t really realize that is something that is supposed to happen. It is, it is one of the more important provisions. Just like anyone else, wants to keep their personnel belongings with them and avoid the tender mercies of the luggage retrieval system. So certainly people who have vital mobility equipment I think would prefer to keep that equipment as close at hand as possible. And within some size constraints, I mean obviously if we are talking about a very large heavy electric powered wheelchair, that is not going to go in an overhead compartments or coat closet. If you have something of a size that will fit, indeed it needs to be accommodated. I have been speaking mostly in terms of issues affecting people with mobility impairments, obviously just like the Americans with Disabilities Act is not nearly the Americans with wheelchairs act. So the Air Carrier Access Act is not solely centered on individuals with mobility impairments. We have provisions, for example, to provide accommodations with individuals with hearing impairment such as a requirement that safety videos be open captioned. In addition, that there be means of getting information to individuals in the gate areas. Those are some provisions that the National Association of the Deaf and others are very interested in improving. We had a public meeting last winter to talk about some ways of improving features and accommodations for people with hearing impairments that we hope will lead to another rulemaking or perhaps regulatory negotiation in areas like both in airport and on aircraft announcements and information for people with impaired hearing. There were at the time of the Air Carrier Access Act rulemaking some very hot issues concerning accommodations for people with vision impairments. The rule does make clear, for example, that people with vision impairments as indeed other people with disabilities, can bring their service animals on board with them. That is a provision that is essentially similar to that of the ADA for any public accommodation. People with vision impairments can bring their canes on board with them and place them next to the seats. Obviously it would be assistance provided to people with vision impairments as well as others in terms of boarding and finding their seat and getting to the next gate. Let me, as long as we have time, mention some of the airport accessibility provisions that come under again accommodation of the Air Carrier Access Act, ADA and in Section 504. There is nothing to frightfully surprising here. What we have tried to do is even though there are a group of statutes and regulations that affect airport accessibility, the airport accessibility requirements themselves are very familiar to anyone familiar with Title II and Title III accessibility issues under the ADA. We are looking essentially for compliance with the same standards. We use the same criteria in terms of program accessibility in title II context or readily achievable in terms of Title III context. The only real difference is you will see some specific provisions for airport facilities like having to do with baggage retrieval areas and security screening points that you probably don''t see in other contexts. Although it is legally complex, the substance of the accessibility requirements is something that people who are familiar with the ADA would generally be, very familiar with. There is under the Air Carrier Access Act a requirement that personnel of the airlines be trained in order to carry out their functions, to understand what they are supposed to do, to be able to provide the assistance and be useful in a safe way. I think my experience and from what I''m told the experience of travelers with disabilities is that the airlines have a highly varied track record in the success of their training. There are airlines whose personnel really seem to get it and then there are some that don''t. And I suspect that goes both to the degree that good customer service in general is part of the corporate culture of a given airline. Those airlines that have good customer service, corporate cultures tend to be the same airlines that provide assistance as it is intended to be provided to passengers with disabilities and don''t end up doing things that are too weird. There is an enforcement mechanism. The first level is that each airline is supposed to have available a so-called CRO or complaint resolution officer, who should be the in-house expert by the given airport on how to resolve issues. One of the things that is important for travelers to realize there is supposed to be such a person and that one needs to ask for them hopefully by that title again in hopes that the front line personnel will realize who that is and be able to get a hold of them to resolve an issue before it blows up. We have a complaint mechanism here at the Department of Transportation with our Aviation Consumer Protection Division who field complaints and try to resolve problems with the airlines. Being quite honest about it, our Aviation Consumer Protection Division is quite badly under staffed. There are some very competent conscientious people, but there are not enough of them to handle complaints related to Air Carrier Access Act but also with respect to a variety of other airline consumer issues, such as lost bags, bumping, things like that. So they sometimes are pretty badly backlogged just because they are not enough of them. We do have an enforcement effort particularly in sort of high profile cases that will take airlines to the mat associated with Airline Consumer Protection Division as a legal office called the Aviation Enforcement and Proceedings Office, which on some occasions has taken some very effective action to impose civil penalties or consent decrees on airlines that haven''t got it right. Who have done things like refuse to transport passengers in wheelchairs and things like that. There is also at least a number of courts that have recognized a so-called private right of action in which an individual can on his own sue an airline for a violation of the Air Carrier Access Act and that has happened on a few occasions. As in all almost any area involving civil rights or probably government generally, this is not ever a finished product. There are always more and additional issues that come up and that we need to resolve. For example, as I mentioned we are still in the process of getting out a final rule concerning lifts for the medium size aircraft. That is a work in progress. We have a long standing issue, actually one of considerable frustration to us and to people who have to deal with it, in that our rules do not really do much in the way of assisting passengers who need to travel with oxygen. We have a situation in which FAA safety rules, for I think sound reasons say that passengers cannot bring their own oxygen supplies on board an aircraft, that is essentially for hazardous material quality control reasons. A cylinder of compressed oxygen is clearly a hazardous material and if something goes wrong could have devastating consequences. So what the FAA says is that the only way that an airline can permit a passenger to have oxygen on board is if the airline itself provides that oxygen. Many but not all of the airlines provide that service. There are some airlines and they tend to be airlines for some reason who name end in "west," I''m not sure why that is, do not provide oxygen at all. So an oxygen using passenger is kinds of out of luck if they want to use that airline. In addition, those airlines that do provide the oxygen often do so at a quite high price which can sometimes make the cost of a trip far less affordable for the passenger. There have been a number of suggestions made as to how to deal with that issue, for example one could simply require airlines to provide oxygen or impose price controls or come up with third party organization who would certify the haz-mat compliance of a passenger''s own cylinders. Again this issue has been our plate for a number of years. We haven''t resolved it yet, we continue to hope that we will. But this is clearly a gap in the coverage of the Air Carrier Access Act as of today. In addition as I mentioned earlier, we are working on a project that would involve additional accommodations for people with hearing impairments. Recently in legislation called Air 21, an FAA authorization bill that passed last spring, congress beefed up some portions of the Air Carrier Access Act, it explicitly covered the activities of foreign air carriers for the first time. Under the original Air Carrier Access Act the act applied only to domestic U.S. carriers, not to foreign carriers who might fly in and out of the U.S. And now that gap in coverage has been closed by congress. It increased the civil penalty for a violation of the Air Carrier Access Act to, I believe, $10,000 which probably gives a bit more clout to our enforcements people when they run into a problematic case. Congress has been paying some attention to this set of issues and we got a number of the things we asked for in that legislation. I might mention one other small amendment that we made, we were talking about transporting wheelchairs, about a year and a half ago, we amended our Air Carrier Access Act regulations so that the air carriers would be responsible for the full value of a piece of mobility equipment or other accommodation equipment that the airline had managed to damage or destroy, so that the current cap on airline liability for damaged baggage would not apply to things like accessibility equipment. Those cases don''t come up too often but every now and then one would read of somebody''s $13,000 power wheelchair which had been shredded by the ramp personnel or something and this is intended to get at those occasional situations in which there is heavy damage to an expensive piece of equipment. That is about all I can think of right at the moment. I think probably we are getting to a time in the call it is getting close to a half hour we can go to questions and discussion.
Thanks, Bob. I can see everybody at their sites telling their own air travel war stories, so hopefully we will get some questions. Bob, I''m going to ask the first question. Feel free to give any case examples, if you want to, because we like to hear those war stories as well see how we can learn from other airline''s unfortunate mistakes. Give us an idea of people that require assistance to get on the airplane or to exit the airplane, give us some idea of what is a reasonable time to have to wait for that assistance. Is there anything that is really spelled out or do you look to any cases for that type example?
There is nothing spelled out in the regulation in the sense of so many minutes or a half hour or something like that. And I am not aware of any specific cases, certainly cases that have been litigated, that would really throw a lot of light on that question. I think as a general guideline I would suggest that assistance should be provided within the same general time frame that other passengers are boarding or leaving the aircraft. One does hear horror stories about passengers who are left on the airplane for two hours after everybody leaves because someone forgot to provide assistance or are transferred too late from the gate 17 to gate 25 to catch the connecting flight. I mean in a connecting flight situation I think the answer is fairly easy. You have got to do it in enough time to catch the connecting flight. In the case of boarding or leaving the aircraft at the end of the flight, I would look as a general guideline by the time the other passengers are well in the process of leaving the aircraft and picking up their luggage, that assistance should be provided to the passengers with disabilities as well. That is kind of what I think the notion of nondiscrimination means as applied to this situation. Almost like we say in transportation ADA this is sort of notion of equivalent service in the ADA surface transportation world. And I think I would apply a similar concept here.
Great, thanks Bob.
Hi, this is Donna Redford in Phoenix. My question is when you have a problem, I will give you two examples of problems where to go and what to do about it. One is that they give away your wheelchair to somebody else and you are stuck in the airline airport wheelchair and they don''t help you go find your wheelchair and you have to have people go all over the airport looking for the person that got your wheelchair and the airline doesn''t seem to care. The other is a situation where you stuck in the air on the plane you have transferred from one plane to another and that airplane sits for hours before it leaves, they have pulled away but then you end up sitting there for hours and you are not able to get up and go to the bathroom on that plane. So therefore your health is jeopardized for so many hours without the opportunity to go to the bathroom. Where does one go when one has either one of those situations to actually feel like you get any remediation for them?
I don''t really know. I mean that is something that, you know, our rules really provide a great deal of comfort about. Particularly in the latter situation which is in some ways of course a very chronic complaint of air travelers generally you pull away from the gate and sit there for hours before you take off situation which has more serious health consequences in this kind of situation.
What about the one where the airline does not give you your chair back and doesn''t try to go find your chair for you? They gave it away.
I would certainly-you know, get try getting a hold of the complains resolution officer. I would try basically rattling any cage I could find. The trouble is that the complaint resolution mechanisms that the department has set up tend to be fairly slow, tend to be after the fact. And there isn''t anybody at DOT that you can call in the midst of a sort of emergency situation like that where your chair has gone galavanting all over the airport without you and you don''t know how to get it back. There isn''t anyone in the federal government at FAA or the Department of Transportation who is likely to be in a position to do anything about that.
So afterwards you would then file a complaint with the Department of Transportation
I would certainly do that, but obviously that doesn''t help you right at the moment.
Right.
Bob you talked about the CRO, the complaint resolution officer, is that a type of position that would be at each airport?
According to the rule there is supposed to be a CRO for each airline, either physically at or readily reachable from, each airport, for each airline
So and possibly this is one of the things that we have just kind of learned to do is travel with airlines 800 number. I can''t tell you how many times we have been sitting out on the runway and people have been using the little air phones right there and they have gotten more information from dialing the 800 number then we have from the pilot.
That is a good idea. My favorite example of that not involving a disability case was in this dreadful situation at the Detroit airport a couple winters ago while planes got stuck on the runway during the blizzard, the pilot called the CEO of the airline.
Just to clarify, too, on the issue of the wheelchair getting lost, now a lot of airports contract that service out. So it might not be necessarily be the airline that is transporting people. Now would that be covered under the Air Carrier Access Act or ADA?
Yes. That is-well, it might be both but clearly is covered under the Air Carrier Access Act. One of the things we say in all of our disability rules here is that somebody can contract out their functions but they can''t contract away their responsibilities. Under the Air Carrier Access Act, in a gate transfer situation, the airline you come in on has the responsibility to get you to the connecting gate. Now whether they do that with their own personnel or whether they do it with contract sky caps or whoever, that is their responsibility, that monkey is on their back. So even if it is a contractor or a sky cap doing it they are also responsible for making sure it happens.
I have a question regarding planes that have two levels. Is it possible for a disabled person to ask and request their chair go to the lower level so that they can keep it closer with them and be able to board and exit easier?
I''m afraid I''m having difficulty understanding the question.
Well, I understand that some larger planes have two levels. Because I was told I could be taken to a lower level one time and I thought they forgot where they were. And I was wondering if a person in a chair could board the plane with a chair, then they could go down on the elevator to the lower level of the plane and have their chair stored down there. Then use the boarding chair to get to their seat.
Okay. I am not familiar with any aircraft configuration like that. The only two level passenger compartment that I have ever personally encountered or know of is the 747 configuration that has an upstairs lounge that goes up a little spiral staircase. Typically aside perhaps from a small freight lift does not have an elevator. It is as far as I know, the upper level is just flatly not accessible on those 747 configurations. If, you know, if there are some aircraft and some of the super jumbos that are in the developmental stage, might turn out to be this way, where there actually are two levels with an elevator connection, then something like the questioner describes might be possible. I just am not aware of that being a current feature of any aircraft, however. I could be wrong but I have never heard of one.
Great, thanks Bob. Do we have our next question?
Yes, this is Dick Crandall. One of the concerns that I have is the airlines are notorious for over booking.
That is true
What protection do we have under the ADA to see to it that our flights are not bumped?
Well, the protection for over booking does not come from the Air Carrier Access Act. That comes from a separate set of DOT regulations that deal with over booking and denied boarding compensation. Those rules to the best of my knowledge do not apply to passengers with disabilities any differently than they apply to anyone else. And I think the answer is the Air Carrier Access Act or the ADA don''t say anything additional in the area of bumping and denied boarding compensation beyond the separate denied boarding compensation rules.
Great, thanks Bob. I have a question from one of our on line users in our chat room. I''m going back to the issue of communication and could you elaborate on what are the requirements for airlines to address the overhead announcements of say a delayed flight or those that are moving gates for individuals who are deaf or do not have the same benefit of hearing the overhead paging system?
Right now the requirements are really quite vague. That is to say the general requirement that information should be available, made available to all passengers somehow or other. We do not at this point have specific requirements, for example, for visual paging systems or more specific technology in the paging or gate announcement area. That is one issue that the deaf and hard of hearing community is obviously very keen on. As I mentioned, we have a rulemaking process that is likely to begin soon either as straight rulemaking or as a regulatory negotiation following on a public meeting with airlines and deaf organizations last year. But for right now, our rule is really pretty short on specifics. We recognize that that is a real issue in an area where additional accommodations are probably needed. But we don''t have them in our rule yet.
Go ahead, Ric Edwards.
Hi Bob, Jennifer, how are you?
Great, go ahead.
The question I had to do with attendants. How unable to assist in the evacuation do you have to be in order to fall under the requirement for an attendant? And I have a follow-up question to that.
What the rule says essentially is unable to assist in your own evacuation. It isn''t defined more specifically than that. I think the sort of loose concept is that for example someone who has partial mobility let us say with their upper body, clearly would not fall into that category of unable to assist. Someone who, I don''t know, if this isn''t too politically incorrect, Christopher Reeve probably would probably fall into that category. Often it is a matter of judgment and often the differing judgment of the airlines and passengers, which is why we have the provision in there about the airline gets the last word but if you disagree with it, they pay for the attendant.
Again, follow-up to that. Can the attendant be a spouse or friends who is already traveling with the passenger?
Absolutely.
Okay
The notion is just to have someone there who if the plane pancakes in the runway and they have to open the chute, someone who can help you get to the chute.
I need an attendant from now on.
That was what I was going to say
The attendant rides free if the airline says you have to have one whether you like it or not.
Do you know what percentage of airlines are saying out there that say you have to have one versus ones that-
To my knowledge there is no data on that at all. In fact there is no data on any of these things.
Thanks for the question, Rick. Next question?
Hi. We have two questions. It seems like-I''m interpreting. Does that personnel care worker need to pay for themselves? And the second question is are there any guidelines that would require a certain number of assistive personnel and wheelchairs in the airport?
The answer to the second question is no. That might be a fruitful area for some further work, but the current rules do not do that. And actually that is not been an issue that I''ve heard raised before. But it might be an interesting one. Tell me the first question again, remind me?
The first question is does the attendant have to pay for themselves?
Other than the situation I mentioned a minute ago in response to the previous question, yes.
Great thanks for your question. Do we have our next question?
This is actually Mary Smith. Is the airline responsible if the passenger misses their connecting flight because they don''t get assistance in time enough to make that connection?
I think the answer is in general yes, they are responsible. The harder question is, the follow on question is, okay they are responsible. What happens next? And it seems to me that while this is not spelled out in the regulation, I mean there are lots of real world situations, any regulation simply doesn''t answer. My take on it would be that if you are connecting in Atlanta to a flight out in an hour and the assistance doesn''t show up so you don''t get to the connecting gate in time to get to the plain. Then Delta, whoever, since I use the example of Atlanta, would have the obligation to certainly to do everything they can to get you on the next flight. And unlike a situation where it is the last flight of the night and there is a weather delay and they don''t necessarily put everybody up in a hotel, where there is a specific legal obligation to provide intra-gate transfer, I would certainly argue, although again it is not spelled out in the regulation, that the airline would be in effect responsible for the consequential damages of the failure to perform a specific legal duty. So maybe unlike the regular passenger population in flight cancellation situations, I would certainly make a pitch for the proposition that in that situation the airline would have to provide the hotel and the ground transportation and all that kind of stuff that would be a consequence of someone missing the last flight of the evening because the airline''s transfer screwed up.
Thanks for your question. Bob I have another on-line question here. And this comes specifically to the types of assistance required from airline personnel while in flight for handling say food or packages, maybe even medications. Could you more specifically address what would be the responsibility of the airline personnel to provide that type of assistance?
Well, I can perhaps do it best by example. I think it would be very appropriate to ask the flight attendant to put a package in the overhead bin and bring it down at the end of the flight. With respect to eating, open the package of silver water, pull the foil off the mystery chicken, but not provide actual assistance in eating. With respect to lavatory service, help the person transfer to an aisle chair, help push them back to the lavatory, and perhaps assist in a transfer in an accessible or semi-accessible lavatory, but not provide assistance in the elimination functions. The distinction is between things that you think of as you know personal care and things that you might think of as, you know, an accommodation to the kinds of services that are provided to other passengers.
Great, thanks Bob. I think we have time for one or two other questions. We have a question from Martha White.
My question is in reference to the puddle jumpers in terms of what you indicated was the requirement for the boarding. That would be a mechanical lift, was I understanding that correct?
Yes.
Okay. So for those that aren''t in compliance with that say they are still using the chair up the stairs, is that inappropriate? Or is that like a grandfather rule or something?
Well, it gets a little complicated because the lift rule as of today specifically applies only to the smallest class of puddle jumpers, the 19 to 30 seaters. If you are talking about a larger aircraft, the 30 plus seater, 50 seats, 100 seats, then it is still permissible as of today to use the chair up the stairs rule. Although as I mentioned, that is going to be changing. And then there are also even the small 19 to 30 category there are a few models of aircraft that essentially nothing works for. The aircraft are just, there is one model of aircraft for example where you can''t get a lift up the door at the right angle because you would run into the propeller or nearly. There is another one in which you get somebody up even with a lift to the door and the angle around the bulkhead to go into the cabin is so sharp it is virtually impossible to maneuver someone in a boarding chair. So there are some intractable situations in the smaller aircraft, but by and large the mechanical lift requirement as of today applies to the 19 to 30 seat commuter aircraft
If we know of situations, should we call and complain?
Yes. I certainly would. I mean that is something that is a joint responsibility of the airport and the airline. So you could call not only our Aviation Consumer Protection Division from the airline points of view but also the FAA civil rights office from the airport point of view because they are jointly responsible for making sure that equipment is in place.
Great thanks Martha we have time for one more question and I will turn it back to you if you have final brief closing comment for us.
This is Lyn Geyser. I''m curious because I haven''t heard any mention of assistance animals, obviously when the animals are born are not trained. They require trainers, but they are having difficulty with getting on airlines and not having a hassle. Is there any thought to providing for this in any legislation?
Okay. I actually did mention assistance animals once. But not exactly in this context. Currently the rules and I think this is true really not only of our Air Carrier Access Act rules but also of ADA rules in general. You know, have requirements to provide access to service animals. That is to say those animals who are in fact providing accessibility or accommodation services to people with various disabilities. There isn''t any current provision that talks about animals in training. I know we have had questions in the Air Carrier Access Act context about, for example, a dog who is being trained as an assistance animal being brought on board the aircraft to learn how to work on board an aircraft as distinct from actually providing services to an individual with a disability who is traveling. And the answer thus far has been that while we think that kind of training exercise is a very useful thing, it remains at the discretion of the airline whether or not to allow it under their general animals policy. We don''t know that we have the sort of legislative authority to say not only service animal providing services to a traveler, but also service animal in training. Or another case we have heard about is for example an animal a dog or other, who is traveling to a destination to perform a service there. Not necessarily an assistance dog, but you know, a snifffer dog or something have some socially different purpose. We also have questions that the airlines sometimes raise about dogs that are used for services that you don''t see quite as often as the classic vision or hearing or mobility impairment related dog such as animals that are said to be used for therapeutic purposes in terms of people with mental or cognitive disabilities. You do run into a wide variety of animal related questions and I think they may come up a little more acutely in the airline context than in some others. But our rules in terms of what airlines have to do really focus very much on the service animal function as distinct from something like training. Again that might be an area for some future developments, but I don''t know of anything on the boards right now.
Great. Thanks for your question. I would like to encourage everyone as we are coming up at the end of our hour, to definitely check out the Department of Transportation''s air consumer web site, that is www.dot.gov/airconsumer. Bob I will throw it back to you if you have a brief closing comment
Not that I can think of. That is kind of all I know.
Thank you for taking time out of your busy day to join us and enlighten us a little bit more on the Air Carrier Access Act, especially as we all begin a busy travel season. And I hope you will be able to join us again. For those people that are joining us today, hopefully you will be joining us for some upcoming sessions in this new series, next month we have a double treat for you. We actually have two sessions next month. On November 14th we will have David Capozzi, from the U.S. Access Board talking about the status of rulemaking under the Access Board. This is a session that is kind of a command performance and an update. We have had David here before and he is a wealth of information and we are excited to have him back again this year. In addition to that session, on November 28th we will have a special session on of the ADA Distance Learning 2001 program talking about the current question before the Supreme Court on the issue of the constitutionality at of title II of the ADA. And presenting on that session we will have Kurt Decker, the Executive Director of the National Association of Protection and Advocacy Systems and Sharon Masling, the Legal Director there that has taken the lead on one of the briefs submitted to the Supreme Court. So we are thrilled to have both Curt and Sharon joining us on that topic and talking about the constitutionality issue and what we can hopefully look from the Supreme Court decision. We hope you will be joining us. If you have questions in regards to today''s session or upcoming sessions or any ADA related session or questions please feel free to contact your regional Disability and Business Technical Assistance Center at (800) 949-4232. Thank you all for joining us today and we hope to have you back next month.