Disabled person left stranded by Ryanair: “Few times have I felt so ‘different'”
Forced to give up her holidays due to Ryanair’s refusal to take her wheelchair on board. The disabled Valeria Roberta Vetrano denounced it on her social networks, rejected by the low-cost company after asking her to leave the electric wheelchair on the ground, with which she had already traveled other times.
The fact dates back to last Monday, when Valeria and a friend met at the Bergamo airport of Orio al Serio to take the flight to Bordeaux, departing at 21.50, and spend the long weekend in the French city. At check-in the problems begin: “I am told that the battery of my ‘Ferrari’, which has the permitted voltage, cannot be taken on a flight, because it has a sticker with the words e-bike… and surprise! After so many years and so many trips… you can’t fly,” she wrote on her profile Instagram.
According to the company, the battery is not original. The certificate of originality shown by the disabled woman is worthless: she is asked to leave the motorized part on the ground, without which the wheelchair would however be unusable. At that point she was offered to leave the wheelchair at the airport, boarding the plane without the vehicle. “I would have done it to leave, but they told me they didn’t have a deposit and my wheelchair costs around eight thousand euros,” she told La Repubblica. To solve the problem, she proposes to the employees to have her friend return to the parking lot to leave the pram in the trunk of the car. Again nothing to do: “I would have needed assistance and above all time to reach the gate”. “They told me that the plane certainly couldn’t wait for me and that I would have to run the route or nothing, since I hadn’t thought of it before. They used these very words, as if I were able to run,” she told the Roman newspaper. According to the company, her boarding was denied because she did not provide wheelchair specifications before the flight. “Another thing that is not true”, said the woman, who she underlines having specified the type of wheelchair when booking. “A dehumanizing experience, which made me feel ‘different’ as it has rarely happened in my life,” she commented. “A ground stewardess at one point offered to reimburse me out of her own pocket. Are we kidding? I had duly paid for my ticket, I don’t want alms from anyone”.
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