Wheelchair user refused Eurostar boarding despite booking an accessible space

A disability activist and wheelchair user said she was prevented from checking in for Eurostar in Paris because she had not booked a ramp prior to her journey, despite holding a wheelchair space ticket.

San Jennings, 46, who uses an electric wheelchair, posted on X (formerly Twitter) on Sunday that Eurostar was “being ridiculous” by telling her she needed to book a ramp on top of purchasing a wheelchair space on the train.

“I BOOKED the wheelchair space on a wheelchair priced fare for these trains & I’ve been refused check in BY Eurostar because I haven’t booked a ramp even though I explicitly asked is there anything else I need to do when I was HERE EARLIER,” she wrote, tagging the railway company.

After Eurostar replied to Jennings asking for her booking reference, she questioned why she also needed to book a ramp when she had paid for a wheelchair ticket.

“Why do we have to have an additional layer/task to travel with you to book a ramp? I’ve paid YOU for a wheelchair space, I know it’s 2024 but wheelchairs can’t levitate onto inaccessible trains yet. It should be automatically booked,” she added.

Jennings told the BBC that the staff at Gare du Nord station in Paris had “watched me queue to check in, then turned me round when I got to the front and sent me away to the office” to book a ramp.

After messaging Eurostar on X, Jennings said that a ramp was eventually provided so she could board the train to London, but she said that the incident had been “infuriating”.

Jennings, who was in Paris for the Paralympic Games, said that she checked with staff earlier that day to make sure there was nothing else she needed to do before her trip to the UK, but she was told she did not need to do anything.

When the activist then did try to sort out the ramp, she was asked to present papers showing that she needed it, despite being in a wheelchair.

“It seemed like a petty power play,” she said.

A Eurostar spokesperson told the BBC that they “apologise for this experience and understand the anxiety this must have caused the passenger while they waited for the issue to be resolved”.

They continued: “After further investigation, we’ve discovered due to human error, the passenger’s ramp booking was missed when the information was shared between systems.