‘Airport trauma left me in agony’
MAN LEFT ‘IN AGONY AND HUMILIATED’ AFTER AIRPORT TRAUMA
A DISABLED holidaymaker ended up sliding down stairs on his bottom to catch a plane at Manchester Airport.
Shimon Kaye, 67, from Little Lever in Bolton, can’t walk unaided, having part of his left foot amputated eight years ago.
He arrived at Terminal 3 some two-and-a-half hours before a flight to Treviso, Venice, to celebrate his wife and carer Marie’s 60th birthday.
He booked ‘special assistance’ as he uses a wheelchair or walking frame to get about.
But he says the airport official who was supposed to help arrived too late and struggled to operate a special wheelchair lift as his flight prepared to depart.
Shimon, who has a daughter, said: “We arrived in good time but nothing was happening. Time was going on and I was worried about missing my plane as there were only 20 minutes to go to departure.”
Then an official from special assistance, ‘a young lad,’ came to help Shimon but repeatedly got his name wrong, he said.
He was taken in the wheelchair to a special lift, Shimon says, but the official allegedly struggled to operate it.
“I was getting so frustrated I decided to get my walking stick and sit myself down on the stairs and slide down on the stairs.
“There must have been 20 steps. I held onto the banister and held onto my walking stick. I slid down on my backside until I got to the bottom.”
By this time, the official had finally managed to operate the lift and offered Shimon the wheelchair for the final 50 yards to the plane.
But Shimon refused and ‘hoisted’ himself off the floor, struggling painfully to the plane with the help of his wife.
A member of the Ryanair cabin crew then came to help him climb the stairs into the jet.
“I was just so angry. I’m in absolute agony,” he said, adding that the experience had left him feeling ‘humiliated.’
He told the M.E.N. the service provided to disabled passengers in other countries is ‘brilliant,’ but he was left ‘ashamed’ of Manchester Airport.
When approached by the M.E.N. ABM Aviation, which was awarded the contract to cater for the needs of disabled passengers at Manchester Airport in April, apologised and promised to investigate.