A mother insists that nothing has changed for disabled air passengers in the last 20 years after her son’s postural support chair was not loaded onto a Ryanair flight to Poland – then delivered broken three days later.
Kirsty Diaso flew solo from Dublin Airport to Warsaw with her three-and-a-half-year-old Andre, who has cerebral palsy and is quadriplegic and visually impaired, on Saturday, 28 June.
The former flight attendant and her son had boarded Ryanair flight FR1925 using an OCS ambulift before the vital mobility aid was left in Ireland.
On landing, airport assistance staff boarded the aircraft and told the family that Andre’s wheelchair was still in Dublin.
Ms Diaso claims staff said: “It didn’t get put on the plane, so you’re just going to have to carry him.”
“What I’ve found with disabled children is people just expect you to carry them, but what they don’t understand is it’s not as easy as picking up a toddler who can walk, so you carry them a short while and drop them again,” she told The Independent.
She was forced to carry Andre, two backpacks, two suitcases and a travel cot through Nowy Dwór Mazowiecki airport alone.
The mother and son were visiting Warsaw for a specialised two-week therapy clinic.
Ms Diaso was left confined to an apartment in the Polish capital with her disabled son for three days after leaving the airport without the wheelchair.
She said: “It was just a disaster, it was horrendous; it is so stressful.”
Ms Diaso said she was unable to “even go to the shop to buy water” as a solo traveller with a disabled child she could not carry.
She claims only an adult-sized wheelchair was offered as a seat for Andre while she attempted to fill out a lost luggage form at baggage claim, adding that the ordeal left her son “very stressed, confused and frustrated”.
“To deny someone the right of comfort and dignity is a whole different level – he hasn’t got his legs, the chair is his legs,” she added.
Ryanair flew the chair to Poland on the next available flight. Although the mobility aid arrived in Warsaw on Sunday evening, it was not couriered to the therapy clinic until Tuesday morning.
On delivery, Ms Diaso said the chair’s foot plate was “completely hanging off” and had to be repaired, with the fold mechanism now “sticking”.
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