Advocacy groups for the disabled community said the FAA funding reauthorization bill that passed last month will make flying a safer and more comfortable experience for travelers with disabilities.
"We are very excited," said Angel Hardy Heinz, public policy manager for the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation. "We worked for many years with a coalition to get this, and we are all so pleased that so many of the aircraft accessibility issues made it into the bill."
Among other measures, the bill touches on training requirements for workers who handle wheelchair stowage or who assist flyers who use a wheelchair for boarding.
In addition, it requires that the FAA begin considering passengers with disabilities as it conducts tests to establish aircraft evacuation procedures.
It sets the framework under which regulators must consider requiring airlines to provide at least two seats in the economy cabin that accommodate flyers using their own wheelchair. And it instructs the DOT to develop regulations within three years that would require airlines to provide appropriate seating for any flyer with a disability, potentially including guaranteeing that such flyers can sit next to a companion or make use of choice aircraft real estate, such as bulkhead rows.
Another clause requires that passenger portals, including airport kiosks and airline and airport websites, be accessible to flyers with varying types of disabilities, such as vision impairment.
John Morris, founder of the WheelchairTravel.org advocacy group, said that he, too, is pleased with the various accessibility measures in the law.
"A lot of the measures in this bill won't take effect immediately but will put the DOT on the right track to better respond to the needs of disabled passengers," he said.
As Morris referenced, several measures in the bill give the DOT time periods ranging from six to 30 months for implementation. In addition, the DOT beat Congress to the punch on some of the measures. For example, the department has already begun a rulemaking process to set training requirements for workers who load wheelchairs or transport passengers onto planes in chairs.
But even in those cases, Morris said, congressional action is important. The new law stipulates that workers will have to complete the training prior to performing wheelchair-related duties and will have to be recertified every 18 months, setting a baseline which the regulations being written by the DOT must meet.
Heinz and Morris both said the training requirements are among the biggest wins in the bill for the disability community.
"We hear from members of our community so often where someone is being transferred and they have been dropped because the person is not trained to handle someone who lives with spinal cord injuries or paralysis," Heinz said.
Training for workers loading chairs onto planes could make a significant difference in the wheelchair damage rate, Morris said, which is consistently well above the damage rate for baggage.
Another provision that Heinz called out as key is a requirement that the DOT provide a finding in writing on accessibility-related complaints within four months of the complaint being filed.
Morris said he believes the law's requirement that the FAA assess its evacuation testing procedures is its most important accessibility measure. FAA regulations require that aircraft must be able to be evacuated within 90 seconds. But when the agency last conducted evacuation testing in late 2019 and early 2020, the tests did not include anyone with a mobility disability nor any senior citizens or children.
The assessment, which must be completed within a year, has to consider those groups as well as various other groups and factors that could slow evacuations.
Both of the advocates also highlighted the significance of the provision requiring the DOT to work with the industry toward a requirement that aircraft provide accommodation for at least two personal wheelchairs, provided that doing so proves to be feasible from a safety and financial standpoint.
An understanding that such rules were likely in the offing has already spurred private sector research into wheelchair accommodation on planes, Morris believes. Last week, Delta Flight Products and Collins Aerospace separately presented prototype solutions at the Aircraft Interiors Expo in Hamburg, Germany.