Tips for wheelchair users traveling by plane

Let me start by saying that most of my experience here is with using my own small manual wheelchair. My needs are going to be different that you’re especially if you’re using a larger power wheelchair.

1. The biggest tip of them is to make sure you communicate well with the airline you’ve chosen to fly with. You’ll save a lot of trouble if you don’t assume the airline knows what you want and what your needs are. This means checking off that you use a mobility device if you’re booking online or letting the booking agent know over the phone.

2. If possible when you’re checking in tell the agent you’re going to keep your chair with you right up until the gate. Also make sure they provide you with a door tag to attach to your chair. This tag lets the ground crew know that your chair should be the last thing to go into cargo and the first thing to come out. Also that it needs to go up to the door of the plane and not the baggage hall with the rest of the stuff (I've had this happen).

Once you get to the gate if you’re unable to walk you’ll transfer to an aisle chair. This is a tiny skinny chair that will fit down the aisle so you can get to your seat.

My understanding is if you're traveling with a power chair there are issues depending on what kind of battery your chair uses. Make sure you check ahead with the airline as you may need to arrive extra early so them to accommodate you. 

3. Depending on if you're wheelchair folds or not you may want to consider placing a sign on it indicating this. I've seen airlines try to force a chair to fold when it doesn't. Or try to fold something the wrong way and break it as well. Yes the airline might be liable for damages but that doesn't help when you arrive in your destination with a broken wheelchair. 

4. Washrooms on airplanes are notoriously tiny. Make sure to ask in advance if the plane will have an aisle chair on board so the flight crew can assist you to the washroom as needed. Some planes have two washrooms where one is large enough to fit the aisle chair right inside. Some Others have a curtain that go across so the door to the washroom stays open. To me that kind is annoying but I can see it being helpful if you needs to have someone there to assist you as well.

5. Always try and bring some spare parts with you if you're able to. For me this means extra tubes for tires. Also possibly some kind of pump if you're able to fit it in your luggage. For powerchair users an extra charger or at least cable for your charger is advisable. Also make sure the charger can handle the voltage of the place you're traveling too. Or if not that you have a step down/up transformer. 

Hope this helps out. Let me know if you have any extra suggestions. 

Tomorrow We Fly

So tomorrow we are off to New York for 5 nights. I know this because I got the reminder from Porter Airways in my e-mail. Really, did they think I was going to forget something like this? Anyway the e-mail says I can check in online and print my own boarding passes. I'm going to be leaving the house with tons of extra time in the morning so I'm not too worried about that. I won't be reporting on the shuttle bus that Porter offers as we will just be taking a cab over. 

Day one the plan is to check into the hotel and relax a bit first. Find a decent place to have a bit of an early dinner then head for the Empire State Building. I've heard it's good to do it at the start of your trip to give you a good overview of the city. There really isn't any plans for the days after that. I have a list of things we want to try and see but as for how they will all fit in I'm not sure really. I'm bad for trying to pack too many activities so I'm trying to be realistic this time. 

Hopefully I'll be able to write and post photos here as we are on the trip. I'm just taking an iPad mini and not my whole laptop so we'll see how that goes. 

New York here I come.

New York Trip Planning Part II

A Hotel Obsession 

So I finally booked a hotel for our New York trip this coming May. Sure it may have taken a few nights of obsessive searching online to make sure we get the best deal and the best place but it's done. As I said before we are trying to do this trip on a reasonable budget and hotels in New York are crazy expensive. So we ended up booking a new Marriott Hotel not too far but not right at Times Square. To be honest I was kind of worried about the amount of street noise from the square we might run into if we were right next to it. It might not be overly fancy but honestly it's New York. We are going to spend most of our time out doing things hopefully. The place has free wifi, wheelchair accessible rooms and a fitness centre which my wife requested. There are two major transit hubs with in a few minutes walk so getting around should be easy. Also there is a Stumptown coffee roasters store really close by. Honest I didn't know that part prior to booking. However I'm not going to lie it’s a nice bonus for sure. Especially after being in Israel and having sub-par coffee everyplace.

Because we booked so far in advance of the trip we saved a decent amount on the hotel. It means the hotel is non-refundable but we were okay with that this time around. Also we have trip cancellation insurance just incase. The problem of course with booking this far is that now I'm super excited and I can't wait to go. I'll now move on to obsessively looking up reviews of places to eat at and where to buy the best coffee. Also planning what we want to see and figuring out if we need to book tickets in advance. If you've been to New York in the past few years and have some idea's of what to see, do or eat. Please let me know in the comments.