When I started The Travelling Para, I didn’t really know where it would lead.
I just knew something needed to change.
Over the past few years, I’ve had my wheelchair damaged multiple times while flying. Anyone who relies on a wheelchair will understand that it’s not just an inconvenience when that happens; it affects your independence, your safety, your dignity, and your ability to function when you arrive.
What many people don’t see is the anxiety that wheelchair users carry every time we fly. You spend the entire flight wondering:
Will my chair be there when I land?
And if it is, will it be in one piece?
Recently, I was invited to speak with ground handling staff and share what it is actually like to travel as a wheelchair user, not just the practical side, but the psychological side too.
From that conversation, we filmed a video about the lived experience of travelling with a wheelchair.
I have now been told that the video is being distributed worldwide through Qantas News (known by staff as Roo News), which goes out to more than 30,000 staff globally, and the video has also been embedded into Ground Operations Ramp training around the world.
That means the people who physically load and unload wheelchairs onto aircraft are being shown what a wheelchair actually means to the person who relies on it.
- Not luggage.
- Not equipment.
- But independence.
- Dignity.
- Freedom.
For years, wheelchair users have been saying the same thing:
Our wheelchairs are not luggage; they are our legs.
What this shows is that change doesn’t always come from anger.
Sometimes change comes from conversations.
From sitting down with people.
From telling them what life is actually like.
From helping people understand the consequences of what might seem like a small mistake.
There are good people inside this industry who do care and who are trying to make things better. I have met many of them over the past couple of years. And when those people are given the opportunity to listen and understand, things can start to change.
This is how progress happens.
Not all at once.
But step by step.
Conversation by conversation.
Person by person.
And maybe, just maybe, the next generation of wheelchair users will find travel a little bit safer and a little bit less stressful than it is today.