While the incident involving India's para Olympic shotput champion Malti Hola took place in February it was not reported in the press until March 19. The Times Now reports:
The incident occurred on February 20 on a flight to Delhi from Bangalore. Hola says after a two and a half hour flight, she was made to wait for another one and a half hours on the plane due to a delay in the arrival of the special chair which would take her out of the plane. The athlete did not receive any aid from the crew to visit the lavatory on the plane, resulting in an embarrassing situation for her.But the problems did not end there. Malvi recalled her ordeal in an interview to TIMES NOW:
"The total journey was almost 2 and a half hours. They made me sit for one more hour and a half because of the 'in chair' (aisle chair) that had not arrived - there was a big communication gap between the cabin crew and the ground staff. The in chair is directly wheeled to the seat and the passenger transferred to her seat. By the time this arrived, I had developed internal problems since I had not been able to go to the toilet. My bladder was full so I started wetting my clothes.
"When I finaly came out, I had a big argument with the ground staff and the Jet Airways people. When my wheelchair came out of the cargo hold, it was totally broken, I was not able to use it at all. You know how essential the wheelchair is to people like us," she said.
Hola added that the Jet airways officials "did not have the courtesy to even taken down the complaint. They were just going on apologising for the delay."
For the full report:
http://www.timesnow.tv/NewsDtls.aspx?NewsID=6594
For commentary by Peter Tan:
http://www.petertan.com/blog/2008/03/19/more-on-airlines-mistreating-disabled-passengers/