Good Service, Bad Design: Flying While Disabled

It’s January. The long evenings are still with us, but thoughts are already drifting towards summer. Holidays. City breaks. A bit of warmth and light. For many people, this is the moment when flights get booked, and plans begin to take shape.

For disabled people, especially wheelchair users, that process comes with a different set of questions. Not just where to go, but whether flying will be manageable at all.

Credit where it’s due. British Airways has done something genuinely good.

Last March, they launched a dedicated Accessibility Team. Trained staff. Partnerships with disability charities. A freephone number answered by a human being. They also became the first airline to receive the National Autistic Society’s Autism Friendly Award.

That matters. Being treated with respect at the booking stage makes a difference. Speaking to someone who understands your needs reduces anxiety before the journey has even begun.

This is real progress.

And yet.

The BA Accessibility Team reminds me of poor old King Canute trying to hold back the tide.

However committed the staff are, they can’t redesign an aircraft. They can’t widen aisles, make toilets accessible, or stop wheelchairs from being damaged in the hold. The biggest barriers wheelchair users face when flying aren’t customer-service failures. They’re structural.

Take toilets. Many wheelchair users stop eating and drinking before a flight. Some start the day before. Not by choice, but because most aircraft toilets are completely inaccessible. A few planes do better. Most do not.

So people risk dehydration and infection rather than face the impossibility of needing the toilet mid-flight. That isn’t about poor service. It’s about design.

Then there’s what happens to wheelchairs once they’re handed over at the aircraft door. They get damaged. They go missing. They arrive late or broken. Many are bespoke, fitted precisely to one body. They are not replaceable in any meaningful sense.

I’ve talked about this before on The Way We Roll podcast with Simon Minty. 

Flying to Malaga in 2025 sounded straightforward enough. Until we landed, my wheelchair wouldn’t move at all. It wasn’t repairable in Spain. I had to hire a replacement — completely unsuitable, but just about usable — so I could get around for the rest of the trip.

It made for a good story afterwards. At the time, it was draining. And it underlined a simple truth: when a wheelchair fails, independence goes with it.

No Accessibility Team can fix that. The problem sits in the cargo hold, in systems that treat essential mobility equipment like awkward luggage.

And then there’s boarding. Or more accurately, being brought on board.

Wheelchair users are transferred into narrow-aisle chairs and wheeled through the aircraft once other passengers are already seated. It’s slow. It’s public. And it strips away any sense of privacy. 

If the aircraft isn’t parked at a proper jetty, the process is even more exposed. 

Non disabled passengers use the stairs. Wheelchair users are taken separately in what’s known as an ambulift — a platform on the back of a lorry — driven across the tarmac, lifted into the air, and brought into the aircraft through the service door where drinks and frozen meals are loaded.

It’s efficient, perhaps, but it's not dignified.

The staff involved may be attentive. The equipment may function exactly as intended. But the message is unmistakable: this is not how the aircraft was designed to be used.

Nearly half of wheelchair users now say they no longer feel able to fly. That’s despite initiatives like BA’s. Despite training. Despite goodwill.

Because the barriers remain.

If we’re serious about change, the answers are obvious. Wheelchairs in the cabin. Accessible toilets on all aircraft. Accessibility is built into the design, not bolted on later.

There’s a Parliamentary Bill due in July. The CAA consulted last year. We’re still waiting for action.

In the meantime, airlines like BA are doing what they can within a system that wasn’t built for us.

Their Accessibility Team deserves credit. They are improving what they can. They are treating people with respect.

But like Canute, they’re still standing at the shoreline praying for a miracle.