Airline sorry for passenger’s unpleasant experience
Print Edition
China Eastern Airlines yesterday apologized to a passenger who suffers from brittle bone disease after flight attendants refused to help her disemebark at an airport in southwest China.
Sun Yue, the passenger, said an official with the airline said the incident had been a mistake on the part of its staff and promised that it would improve its services in the future.
On Tuesday, Sun, a Beijing resident, was on a flight from the capital to Kunming in Yunnan Province but when the aircraft landed she was told a wheelchair at Kunming was too wide to get through the cabin door. She said she was told she would have to get off by herself.
She said the boarding process at Beijing was smooth — a crew member used a smaller wheelchair to take her to the seat.
But at Kunming, “both the flight crew and airport staff refused to carry me the few meters from my seat to the cabin door,” she said, adding that they argued among themselves for about half an hour about what to do rather than asking her what she wanted.
The crew asked Sun to pay an emergency rescue fee to allow staff at the airport hospital to carry her on a stretcher but Sun refused. She finally managed to get to the wheelchair with the help of two colleagues and a member of the airline staff.
“I have been on more than 20 aircraft since 2013 and the process has always been very smooth,” Sun said. She always told the airline in advance about her condition.
“Previously, if the carriers could not provide a special wheelchair they would ask their crew to take me off,” she said.
Sun, who works for the China-Dolls Center for Rare Disorders, was traveling with colleagues to visit fellow sufferers.
The center issued a statement demanding a public apology and a promise that similar incidents would not happen in the future. It also urged the airline to ensure crew members were trained in how to properly deal with such situations.
“The incident was no big deal for me, but the crew’s reaction made me deeply disappointed about the airline,” Sun said.
“We are deeply sorry for this passenger’s unpleasant experience,” the airline said on its official microblog.
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