The Canadian Transportation Agency has announced a one person, one fare policy to make air travel more accessible.
In One Person, One Fare Policy, I outlined the Canadian Transportation Agency's ruling about accessible travel.
There will be a year before the airlines have to implement this ruling. They have to come up with screening procedures that make sense.
Some of the potential problems we can expect are:
- how to tell whether a personal care attendant is needed during the actual flight, in borderline cases. One of the potentially troubling parts of the ruling is that if the traveller needs care on the ground at the destination, but not in the air, the personal care attendant is not allowed to fly free. This at first glance ignores the reality of the working relationship between a PCA and their client. By analogy, a blind person doesn't need their service dog during the flight, but can't just pick up a new dog at their destination. PCA's are not always interchangeable either.
- how to tell if a person is obese enough to be functionally disabled (in the context of flying). The CTA suggested using the armrest test, which apparently works for SouthWest Airlines. If the passenger can't comfortably lower the armrests, they need more space.
- people who need more space for reasons other than obesity. The ruling singled out obesity, but is not apparently limited to people who need more space because of being overweight. There are non-obese people who need more room. Are they willing to be classed as "functionally disabled" in order to get some comfort on the plane? This would include everyone over the height of about 5'9", and lots of big, healthy people, regardless of whether their bulk is muscle or fat.
This is a very progressive ruling, and it will be a credit to the airlines if they rush to implement it, at least in the most obvious cases.
