Candidate for runner-up on Tebet’s ticket said she received damaged locomotion equipment after waiting 1h30
the senator Mara Gabrielli (PSDB-SP) said this Sunday (21.Aug.2022) that the airline lufthansa damaged his wheelchair on a flight from Geneva to Zurich, Switzerland. Gabrilli is running for vice president on the slate of Tebet synonym (MDB-MS) and was returning from an event at the UN.
In post on twitter, the senator reported that, upon arriving in Zurich, airline employees could not find her chair. She refused to get off the plane until she had the equipment. After 1h30 of waiting, the company brought the damaged chair.
In response also via Twitter, the airline replied, that “sorry for the unpleasant experience on the trip” and sent a link to report the incident. O Power 360 tried to contact Lufthansa, but until the publication of this post, there was no response.
According to the senator’s press office, the broken part of the equipment is responsible for stabilizing the chair, especially when Gabrilli stands up.
The senator also said that company employees wanted her to leave the aircraft even without the chair. “By refusing to leave, they accused me of interfering with the boarding of other passengers who needed to go home as if I was worthless and didn’t want the same”, wrote Gabrielli.
Also according to the candidate, this was not the first time that the company had damaged its locomotion equipment. Five months ago, the senator stated that Lufthansa had lost her wheelchair and had to spend 30 days on a mission at the UN with a broken chair.
The technical report that assessed the damage to Gabrilli’s chair at the time found that “such producer has lost its stability in service, for all technical design (chassis) and functional (orthotactic position) characteristics offered to the end user”. Here’s the intact of the technical report (268 KB).
“This is a reality experienced by many people with disabilities. I get cases like this every day and we charge companies. Here I don’t speak for myself, I speak for everyone (…) The wheelchair is an extension of our body. Without it I can’t move. And with it broken, my body is too”, said the senator via Twitter.
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