Rolling through Dallas and Chicago

[cjsmith]

I just called American Airlines and reserved myself some wheelchair assistance for connecting between two flights. That felt weird. It's something I've never done before.

I didn't know before looking at the airline's web page, but apparently there are three flavors of mobility assistance: passenger can walk but needs help with stairs, passenger can walk but needs help due to the distance from gate to gate, passenger can't walk much if at all and needs help getting to and from the seat on the aircraft. I fall neatly into a category for the first time in my life.

Comments

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

Which is your flavor? Mine is generally the second. I need the wheelchairs for anything like lines or standing around, because that hurts more than almost anything, and I need the electric vehicles for gate-to-gate. I first used them in Seattle, in 2001 -- and note that you sometimes need to be on top of it. Going to Vancouver (we rented a car in Seattle and drove north) it was fine at SJC, but when we got to the Seattle airport, they called the electric vehicle and told me to wait, and quite a bit later, they called to find out where the person was, and the vehicle had gone to the wrong place, where I wasn't, assumed I'd left on my own, and vanished. So you need to pay attention to time and make sure you're not forgotten.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

My flavor is the second, also: I can get on/off the aircraft, I can do stairs (as long as I can turn around and go backwards for the descent), but standing or walking for any length of time is awful.

Thanks for the heads-up on being aware. I figure there's probably a lot of waiting around involved with this, but I'm not sure how much is normal.