[Jamie89]

Originally Posted by Livia

90% of planes have no wheelchair access, but more than 90% of passengers don't use a wheelchair. It doesn't make economic sense to have disabled toilets on every plane, just in case. Is it too much to ask that disabled people use planes fitted out for them? Otherwise the cost of making every plane toilet accessible will be passed on to every passenger.

Hi Livia. My view on this is that yes a disabled person could only use planes that are equiped for them, but there are still a number of problems with that. If all disabled passangers only booked flights on well equipped planes, then all those planes would be filled with disabled passengers only. I doubt that even planes that are equiped for disabled passengers, are well equiped enough to handle an entire plane of disabled passengers. And why shouldn't disabled people have just as many options as to the times they wish to fly, they might want a specific flight because of the price, or other reasons, and it just stings a bit that the reason they're limited in a way other people aren't is because of something like a toilet not being available to them, and the possible humiliation involved in that.
Yes the way it is, is like that because of economic sense, but I think there are a lot of problems generally in society with how we cater for disabled people, and if it means the economy of the airlines or able-bodied passengers takes a hit in order to correct some of the issues we have regarding how disabled people are catered for, then I'm all for that. I think society as a whole should take on some of the burden that is created by disability, I mean noone likes the idea of paying more for things because of other people (me included), but weighing that up against the idea of just leaving disabled people to get on with things, I don't know, it just isn't something that sits right with me, and not how a 'society' should operate I think.

Originally Posted by Livia

Well, I tailor my travel to suit my needs. If disabled people want to fly then they can... they just have to choose a route and a time that suits their needs. You cannot cater for every single person's particular need or the plane would never get off the ground.

It's not a case of the airlines needing to cater for everone's specific and individual needs, I mean the 'needs' in question here are basic sanitory ones, so when you or I are choosing flights based on our needs, it isn't an issue for us to take into consideration. Noone other than disbled people are limited to such a degree here so the needs that we have with regards to how we tailor our bookings aren't really comparable, we know that regardless of the flight we take, we're still going to have access to a toilet. But for them, they already have to tailor their bookings in the same way the rest of us do, but then on top of that, they have an extra 90% chance that the booking they want isn't going to be accessible for them.