The Air Carrier Access Act

Presenter: Mike Spollen

November 19, 2003

Sponsored by: The Disability Law Resource Project (DLRP)

RACHEL: Hello, everybody. Good afternoon and welcome to today's  Web cast on the 
Air Carrier Access Act. Today's  Web cast is about the rights of air travelers 
with disabilities. Today's  Web cast is sponsored by the Disability Law Resource 
Project, fondly known as DLRP. And we are at ILRU. My name is Rachel Kosoy-
Schwartz. I'm with DLRP and I will moderate today's  Web cast which basically 
means that as you guys E-mail questions in for the presenter, I will voice your 
questions to him.

Now, before I go about introducing the presenter, I want to remind you that he 
will be taking questions. So, please, if you have questions now, go ahead and 
submit them and you can submit them at any point during the  Web cast. And as he 
pauses to take questions, I will go ahead and pose them to him.

Now, in order to submit a question, you have a couple of options: If you look at 
the bottom of your RealOne Player, the screen there, there should be a link that 
you can click on. Otherwise, you can simply address something to  Web 
cast@ilru.org. And if anybody has technical difficulties today, please feel free 
to give us a call. Our voice and TTY number is (713)520-0232.

Okay, with that out of the way, I would like to introduce you to our presenter 
for today. We did have scheduled two presenters, Blane Workie and Mike Spollen, 
both from the Department of Transportation. Unfortunately, Blane sends her 
regrets. She is unable to be with us. At the last minute she had a private 
family emergency that she needed to tend to, but fear not, we have Mike with us 
today. And Mike can answer almost, if not all, of your questions and has agreed 
that certainly if a question comes up that he can't answer, that we will get the 
answer for you and be back in touch with you individually.

So let me tell you a little bit about Mike. Mike began his federal career as an 
investigator in 1979 with the Civil Aeronautics Board, CAB. He investigated 
potential violations by airlines of various consumer protection regulations and 
was involved closely in the development and the implementation of the first 
federal regulation protecting the rights of airline passengers with 
disabilities.

Now, Mike has some commentary he may or may not choose to share with us today 
about how Congress closed the Civil Aeronautics Board after realizing that Mike 
was working there, but fear not, Mike transferred to the Department of 
Transportation and continued his work on behalf of people with disabilities.

He currently works in the general counsel's Aviation Consumer Protection 
Division. Since the passage of the Air Carrier Access Act, which he may refer to 
today as the ACAA. Since the passage of the ACAA in 1986, Mike has been actively 
involved in the Department of Transportation's effort to protect the civil 
rights of airline passengers with disabilities as well as to ensure that the 
airlines are complying with the regulations.

Mike currently serves as the Department of Transportation's aviation disability 
team leader where he helps coordinate the department's rule-making, 
investigation and enforcement activities. And just a final note before I turn it 
over to Mike, if you do hear him say DOT, he is referring to the Department of 
Transportation, and again, ACAA refers to the Air Carrier Access Act. And so 
without further ado, Mike, let me go ahead and turn it over to you.

MIKE: Thanks very much, Rachel. It's really a pleasure to participate in this. 
As you said earlier, Rachel, I first off want to send out the regrets of Blane 
Workie who was planning on being with me on this today. She had to attend to an 
urgent family matter so she sends her regrets not only because he can't 
participate but because you're stuck with me as the presenter.

I also want to go on to say that in addition to the acronyms DOT and ACAA, if I 
use BLT, that stands for bacon, lettuce and tomato. I don't think that's 
probably going to come up in my conversation.

RACHEL: Now, I thought, Mike, that you said you were telling me all the corny 
jokes before we started. But you had a few left.

MIKE: That was the last one. I promise. As Rachel just mentioned I work at the 
Department of Transportation in Washington D. C. in the office of the Secretary 
of Transportation, Norman Mineta, and I work in the department's general 
counsel's office in the Aviation Consumer Protection Division and our office is 
probably best known, if you've heard of us at all, as the office that attempts 
to resolve airline passengers' service related complaints against airlines. The 
Secretary of Transportation, Norman Mineta, and the department as a whole, are 
very concerned about ensuring the civil rights of airline passengers with 
disabilities. Therefore, complaints involving passengers with disabilities and 
disability issues in general are given a very high priority within the 
department.

As many of you may know, the Air Carrier Access Act, as Rachel pointed out 
otherwise known as the ACAA, was signed into law by then President Reagan in 
October of 1986. The ACAA prohibits discrimination against folks with 
disabilities in commercial air transportation.

The ACAA is sometimes confused with the Americans with Disabilities Act, or the 
ADA, which was signed into law by then President Bush in July of 1990. The 
primary distinction between the Air Carrier Access Act and the Americans with 
Disabilities Act is that the former law prohibits discrimination by airlines 
against passengers with disabilities, whereas the ADA prohibits discrimination 
in employment, public accommodations, commercial facilities and transportation 
other than by commercial airlines. For example, subway and bus systems.

I'm going to give just a quick overview of what the Air Carrier Access Act 
provides and requires, if you have any questions, by all means during the course 
of my comments don't hesitate to interrupt me. I'm used to that where I work. 
But in any event, as I mentioned, the Air Carrier Access Act prohibits 
discrimination against airline passengers with disabilities. The act is 
essentially intended to remove the nonsafety related barriers, both physical and 
attitudinal to air travel by disabled passengers. The act is intended to ensure 
that passengers with disabilities enjoy equal access to the nation's air 
transportation system and are afforded the safe and dignified service that they 
and all other passengers are entitled to.

The act and its implementing regulations, which is called 14 CFR part 382 are 
intended to remove the hassle and the stress and even occasional degradation 
that has sometimes been encountered by disabled travelers prior to passage of 
the Air Carrier Access Act.

As I just mentioned, it's been about 17 years since the passage of the act and 
13 years since the department adopted the final regulations implementing the act 
which is part 382 of our Code of Federal Regulations.

These regulations we think represent a major stride forward in improving air 
travel for persons with disabilities and in protecting their civil rights. Our 
ACAA rules we think clearly explain the responsibilities of the airline 
traveler, the airlines themselves, the airport operators and contractors, who 
collectively make up a system which moves over a million passengers each day.

As a preliminary matter our rule essentially defines an individual with a 
disability as an individual who has a physical or mental impairment that on a 
permanent or temporary basis substantially limits a major life activity.

Examples of such a major life activity would be such things as caring for one's 
self, forming manual tasks, walking, seeing, hearing, speaking, breathing, 
learning and even working and very briefly, among the numerous other 
requirements, there are a number of fundamental services required by Air Carrier 
Access Act and its implementing rule Part 382.

Our rule requires airlines provide assistance to passengers with disabilities on 
request, with emplaning, deplaning, making connections with an airport between 
flights and also requires airlines to transport wheelchairs and other assistive 
devices and their batteries to return them promptly to the passengers upon 
arrival and to provide special seating accommodations to persons with 
disabilities in certain situations. Airlines may not charge for providing 
accommodations required by our rule such as those services I just mentioned and 
for things such as hazardous materials packaging for wheelchair batteries, but 
they may charge for optional services for example like provision of in-flight 
medical oxygen. Carriers must also allow for the stowage of wheelchairs and 
other assistive devices in the passenger cabin in many situations consistent 
with FAA safety considerations and airlines cannot count an assistive device 
against the carry on totals normally allowed for other passengers. 

Additionally airlines may not limit their liability for damage to a wheelchair 
or other assistive device on a domestic flight and they are also prohibited from 
requiring a passenger with a disability to travel with an attendant except in 
certain very limited circumstances based on safety considerations.

Part 382 also requires new aircraft, and a new aircraft to be defined as one 
ordered after April 5th, 1990, or delivered after April 5th, 1992, to have 
certain physical accessibility features as well, for example, new aircraft with 
30 or more seats must have movable aisle arm rests on half the aisle seats, new 
twin-aisle aircraft must have accessible lavatories, and new aircraft with 100 
or more seats must have priority space for stowing one persons folding 
wheelchair in the cabin. In addition, aircraft other than new aircraft with the 
capacity of more than 60 seats must place an onboard aisle chair on the flight 
if the passenger with the disability gives the airline at least 48 hours notice 
that he or she could use an inaccessible lavatory but they need an onboard aisle 
chair to reach the lavatory. 

Part three also requires training on the ACAA to all contact public employees 
and carriers must make available what's called a complaint resolution official 
or CRO. There is another acronym, to respond to complaints from passengers with 
disabilities. The rule also has detailed provisions requiring carriers to send 
what we call dispositive written responses to written complaints from passengers 
with disabilities.

Since the adoption of the original ACAA regulations in 1990, the Department of 
Transportation has issued several significant amendments to the rules, which we 
believe further enhance the accessibility of the nation's air transportation 
system. For example, in November of 1996, DOT amended the rule to require 
boarding lifts on most aircraft with the capacity of 19 through 30 seats. In 
March of 1998, the Air Carrier Access Act rules were amended to clarify that in 
addition to following other specific provisions of Part 382, carriers might be 
asked to modify policies and practices to ensure nondiscrimination consistent 
with the standards in Section 504 of the Rehab Act unless such a modification 
would pose an undo burden or would fundamentally alter the nature of the 
carrier's program.

Also in March of 1998, the Department amended the rules to establish procedures 
for providing seating accommodations for individuals with disabilities and for 
providing the in-cabin stowage of collapsible electric wheelchairs. An example 
of the kind of seating accommodation I'm referring to is, for example, providing 
a bulkhead seat for an individual who is traveling with a service animal or 
perhaps providing a seat in a row with an aisle with a removable arm rest, for 
someone who is boarded in an isle chair. Other amendments since the rule first 
came into play since August 2nd, 1992, the department amended the rules by 
eliminating the liability limit for loss, damage or delay of wheelchairs or 
other assistive items on domestic flights. We think that was a really good 
addition because we were getting complaints from folks who had very expensive 
wheelchairs that were being damaged and carriers before this amendment were 
allowed to cap their liability limit to around $5,000 and as many of you who are 
listening or watching know, sometimes wheelchairs cost a heck of a lot more than 
$5,000 and people were in the unfortunate situation of having to pay the 
difference between what it actually costs them to repair a wheelchair and the 
5,000-dollar cap. So we've eliminated that liability limit effective August of 
1999.

A couple of other final amendments since the rule went into effect in May 2001, 
DOT issued a final rule requiring the use of lifts to board aircraft with more 
than 30 seats where entry level boarding is not available. We think that this 
new lift requirement should go a long way toward eliminating problems 
experienced by non-ambulatory passengers who were subjected to the former 
practices of being lifted from the tarmac to the door of the aircraft in 
boarding chairs which many passengers rightfully considered to be an undignified 
and unsafe manner of boarding.

Finally, more recently in July 8th of this year, DOT issued an amendment to Part 
382 which requires both U.S. and foreign carriers operating flights to and from 
the U.S. to record and categorize complaints that they received directly from 
passengers with disabilities alleging inadequate accessibility or 
discrimination, and to report such complaints each year to the department.

DOT has plans right now to then submit an annual report to Congress summarizing 
this data that we receive from the airlines.

When initially passed into law, the Air Carrier Access Act applied only to U.S. 
carriers and this is kind of a significant point, that on April the 5th, 2000, 
with passage of separate legislation, called the Wendall H. Ford Aviation and 
Assessment Act for the 21st Century, say that three times real fast, which we 
refer to as Air 21, this separate legislation called Air 21 extended the 
applicability of the Air Carrier Access Act to foreign airlines. So since April 
5th of 2000, the overriding law prohibiting discrimination against folks with 
disabilities now applies not only to U.S. carriers but also to foreign carriers 
and now DOT is currently working on a draft of what we call a notice of proposed 
rule-making that will extend the applicability of the underlying regulation, 
Part 382, to the foreign airlines. It's likely that most of the provisions of 
the current Part 382 that now apply only to U.S. carriers will apply to flights 
of foreign airlines operating to and from the U.S. and to what we call coach air 
flights that such foreign airlines operate in conjunction with U.S. carriers. So 
that's a real significant outcome of this recent legislation called Air 21. Is 
that the Air Carrier Access Act now applies to foreign airlines and I am told 
that sometime in the very foreseeable future we should be putting out a draft 
revised rule that applies both to U.S. and foreign carriers which will be really 
good for folks who oftentimes want to travel on foreign carriers but aren't 
exactly sure what their rights are.

I want to say a few things about some complaint trends in general that come to 
DOT. In our view, airline passengers with disabilities have experienced fewer 
difficulties in gaining access to the nation's air transportation system since 
passage of the ACAA instances of egregious treatment of disabled passengers, 
occur less frequently than prior to its passage in 1990. We think a lot of this 
is in part to the fact that as airlines have become more aware of the need to 
provide services to passengers with disabilities, and have trained their 
customer contact employees in the best techniques for accommodating their needs, 
many of the common problems that had confronted disabled travelers have been 
minimized or eliminated altogether.

For example, we seldom receive complaints involving issues such as refusal to 
board passengers with disabilities or forcing them to travel with attendants 
when not allowed by our rules, refusal to prevent service animals to travel in 
the passengers cabin, refusal to transport wheelchairs or other assistive 
devices or requiring passengers to sign waivers of liability before accepting 
their assistive devices. We believe the disabled air travelers have 
significantly benefited from our ACAA regulations.

However, having said all that, airline passengers with disabilities still 
encounter problems and the department receives a significant number of 
disability complaints each year. For example, just in broad brush strokes, for 
the last five years, DOT has averaged between 375 and 675 disability-related 
complaints each year, which averages between 3 percent and 5 percent of the 
total complaints received by the department.

It's our understanding in speaking with airlines that they receive somewhere 
from 50 to 100 disability-related complaints for every one that DOT receives. So 
while the number of disability complaints received directly by DOT may in fact 
seem small in comparison to those received by air carriers themselves, we 
believe we receive a sufficient number to enable us to accurately track trends 
or spot problem areas and to otherwise identify areas where airlines' policies 
and procedures may need to be corrected in order to ensure compliance with our 
rules. And in that regard, whenever our review of a disability complaint 
indicates that a carrier's policy or procedure is not in compliance with Part 
382, we contact the carrier immediately to ensure prompt corrective action.

A good percentage of the disability-related complaints that DOT receives 
involves potential violation of our rule. That would be where the complainant 
alleges an activity that is inconsistent with the act regulations and the 
carrier responds to the complaint and does not refute or deny the allegation. 
Vast majority of these violations fall into several categories. Number one, 
failure to make wheelchairs available in a timely manner to emplaned folks with 
mobility impairments Number two, failure to deplane passengers in a timely 
manner. And we still receive complaints concerning passengers who are left on 
board aircraft after their arrival and who are discovered by the cleaning crew 
or other airline personnel long after all the other passengers have deplaned. A 
third area we get a lot of complaints about are folks who are leaving disabled 
travelers unattended in wheelchairs for more than 30 minutes. We have a number 
of complaints from individuals who allege they've been assisted to a gate area 
for a connecting flight in a wheelchair, but then removed from the carrier 
wheelchair white waiting and then left unattended in the gate area for extended 
periods of time. Another area we get complaints about or we have detected in our 
review of complaints is carriers failure to file -- I mean to send what we call 
a dispositive written response to the passengers. When I say that, what I mean 
is that some carrier responses are somewhat vague apologies that don't directly 
address the specifics of the particular incident or advise the passengers of 
their recourse to contact DOT, which is required under our rule. Having said 
that, carriers have shown a marked improvement recently in the quality of their 
written responses to disability complaints.

In addition, our data seems to suggest that passengers with disabilities who are 
entitled to special seating accommodations for example the bulkhead seat or seat 
on the aisle with a removable arm rest that I mentioned earlier, sometimes 
continued to have difficulties in obtaining such seating accommodations in 
advance. And we've also received a significant number of inquiries from 
consumers who have questions about the cost and availability of in-flight 
medical oxygen.

In addition to the common potential violations I just mentioned, we also 
received complaints from individuals with disabilities alleging bad attitudes 
and lack of courtesy or sensitivity by airline employees or their contractors on 
their behalf. And it's often this type of alleged insensitive treatment of 
passengers and not violations of the rule itself, which results in complaints 
from passengers with disabilities. So that's just kind of a quick overview of 
the kind of complaints DOT receives.

I'd like to take just a few moments to go over some of the recent compliance 
enforcement and rule-making and public education initiatives regarding 
disability issues within the last year or so. As I alluded to earlier, Secretary 
Mineta, who is by the way the co-author of the Americans with Disabilities Act, 
and also one of the key sponsors of the Air Carrier Access Act is very 
interested in protecting the civil rights of airline passengers with 
disabilities and ensuring compliance with the Air Carrier Access Act and Part 
382. I also mentioned the fact that Air 21, which extended the applicability of 
the Air Carrier Access Act to foreign airlines, also increased the civil penalty 
liability for violations of the act to $10,000 per violation from the former 
$1,100 per violation. And probably most significantly, Congress has recently, 
and by that when I say recently within the last year and a half; Congress has 
recently authorized the funding to hire ten new transportation industry 
analysts. That's what I am, a transportation industry analyst which is a fancy 
name for a complaint handler and they hired ten new enforcement attorneys, their 
principal focus being enforcement of Part 382, and DOT has used this increased 
staff to strengthen our efforts in three basic areas: Number one, enforcement 
investigation, number two would be rule-making and number three is outreach and 
public education.

With regard to the first of those areas, in the enforcement investigation area, 
just briefly, DOT has recently concluded several major investigations focusing 
on alleged violations of Part 382 as it relates to timely and adequate 
wheelchair emplaning, deplaning and connecting assistance. You may or may not 
have heard in the press recently some of the more recent examples of these 
consent orders as we call them, which assess civil penalties include for example 
Northwest Airlines, we assessed a 700,000-dollar civil penalty for alleged 
inadequate emplaning, deplaning and connecting assistance to folks with 
disabilities. One of the unique aspects of that order which has been followed in 
several orders that came out more recently is we have allowed the carrier, 
rather than sending in the entire $700,000 to Uncle Sam, we have allowed them to 
what we call offset a large portion of that $700,000 and put that into other 
programs and activities that will directly benefit the disabled traveler. By 
that, I mean training videos, Northwest has instituted a quality assurance 
program in which folks with disabilities travel on the aircraft and then report 
back to Northwest as to the level and quality of service they provide and a 
whole myriad of other kinds of activities that they're spending the money on 
rather than sending in to the federal treasury where it will be misspent by 
Congress. I trust that whoever is writing this will edit that so I will have a 
job tomorrow.

Other recent consent orders involve U.S. airways which was assessed a 550,000-
dollar civil penalty, which was similar to the Northwest case. We assessed a 
200,000-dollar civil penalty to TWA recently. We assessed a $1.2 million civil 
penalty against American Airlines, all for principally focusing on alleged lack 
of adequate emplaning, deplaning and connecting help to folks who need 
wheelchairs.

We have also recently settled a case with Ryan International Airlines which 
involved several egregious violations of Part 382. That assessment for a 
400,000-dollar civil penalty, and within the last couple of days, we assessed a 
$1.35 million civil penalty against Delta Airlines up to 1.25 million of that 
again is offset for programs and activity that will directly benefit passengers 
with disabilities.

In the enforcement investigation area, DOT has also currently investigating 
several major carriers for potential violations of the in-cabin stowage 
provisions of Part 382. As I mentioned earlier, many aircraft with 100 seats or 
more have to have priority stowage space in the cabin for stowing one 
passengers' folding wheelchair. It has come to our attention within the last 
year that several carriers were not complying with that particular provision, 
having an incabin stowage space for passengers' wheelchair and as a result of 
that we've recently concluded several major investigations which I'll just tick 
off involving Jet Blue, America West, Southwest, Air Tran and Frontier, focusing 
principally on that part of our rule that requires the in-cabin stowage space 
and these not only mandating the carrier come into compliance with our rule they 
assess civil penalties ranging from $100,000 to $500,000. Again, much of which 
is offset for coming into compliance with our regulation.

The department is also in the preliminary stages of investigating several 
foreign airlines apparent lack of compliance with the intent of the Air Carrier 
Access Act. And in addition, with regard to investigation, we as mandated by Air 
21 that I mentioned earlier, the department is also steadily eliminating a 
backlog of informal disability complaints that we've received since April 5th, 
2000, and sending closing letters to all of those complainants who wrote DOT 
explaining the outcome of our investigations.

With regard to the second area I talked about which is rule-making and guidance, 
some of our recent initiatives include -- we've recently issued some revised 
guidance with regard to service animals. That was back in May of this year. Of 
note, with regard to that guidance, as many of you may have heard is that for 
the first time DOT has identified certain classes of service animals that do not 
need to be transported as service animals. For examples, snakes, other reptiles, 
ferrets, rodents and spiders no longer have to be carried if a carrier is not 
disposed to do so. In addition, another effort we've been involved in, as I 
mentioned earlier, we issued a rule on July 8th of 2003 that requires U.S. and 
foreign carriers to record, categorize and report annually to DOT all of their 
written complaints and we will make a summary of that at the end of each year 
and send that up to Congress. I also mentioned the fact that we're involved in a 
big rule-making that's going to extend the applicability of part 382 to the 
foreign airlines and finally DOT has recently over the summer entered into a 
Memorandum of Understanding with the National Council on Disability to explore 
some alternative means of accommodating passengers who require in-flight medical 
oxygen and for those who are deaf and hard of hearing that will not necessarily 
require rule-making by DOT.

Finally, with regard to outreach and public education, many of you might have 
heard that effective on August the 5th, 2002, DOT has established a toll free 
telephone hotline to assist passengers with disabilities in obtaining 
information about their rights, obtaining informational literature, for example, 
we have a new brochure called New Horizons for the air traveler with a 
disability, which is a layman's explanation of what's required under part 382 
and is, and a whole myriad of other guidance that's available through this 
hotline. But in addition, and probably more importantly than finding out what 
these folks' rights are through this toll-free hotline system, they can obtain 
real-time assistance in resolving urgent problems while they're at the airport. 
That is the person can just pick up the phone, call the hotline and if they 
can't find out the information they need or get ready assistance from the 
airline, they can contact the hotline and they will contact DOT. The hotline 
staff, and we will resolve the issue or attempt to by contacting the airline on 
their behalf. This toll free hotline is operational seven days a week, 365 days 
a year, except for Elvis' birthday -- I'm pausing here for laughter -- it 
actually is operational 365 days a year, including Elvis' birthday, from 7:00 
a.m. until 11:00 p.m. eastern time. For those who are interested, the voice 
number for the telephone hotline is 1-800-778-4838, and the TTY number is 1-800-
455-9880. I'd like to repeat those numbers. The voice telephone number for the 
hotline is 1-800-778-4838 and the TTY number is 1-800-455-9880.

In the first year of operation, we received only about 1.5 calls per day on our 
hotline and only about one out of every 30 of those calls resulted in a written 
complaint being filed at DOT. We certainly encourage anybody who may be tuned in 
to this Web cast to use the hotline and to help spread the word about its 
existence because we certainly put a lot of effort into hiring and training the 
hotline staff. And there is a fairly big infrastructure in manning it 16 hours a 
day, every day, so we would really be happy to field questions from the public 
and even if needed resolve time sensitive problems.

FYI, consumers can also file complaints via our E-mail address in my office, 
that E-mail address is airconsumer@ost.dot.gov. Other outreach and public 
education efforts we've been involved in recently, with the assistance of groups 
like the Air Transport Association and the Regional Airline Association and the 
National Council on Disability, DOT recently sponsored the third in a series of 
disability forums, in which government representatives, airline employees, and 
the disability community got together to meet to discuss and attempt to resolve 
pending disability issues. We also participated in a similar disability forum 
recently sponsored by the Transportation Security Administration. Other efforts 
with regard to outreach, the office that I work in, the Aviation Consumer 
Protection Division, has been visiting numerous carriers. We've visited all the 
major carriers and many of the several -- many of the regional carriers, for 
example, Pinacle Airlines, Horizon in Seattle, Chautaqua in St. Louis, Skyway in 
the Milwaukee area, et cetera, essentially to observe and participate in their 
complaint resolution official training classes. We find those things very 
beneficial and like to think that the airlines find them beneficial as well.

In addition, this past summer we initiated a toll free fax-on-demand system in 
which consumers can obtain faxed copies of our informational pamphlets, 
including in Braille and in other languages that they don't have access to our 
website, they can phone in and they can get right over the phone a fax on demand 
any of our informational literature, if you don't happen to have like me a 
computer at home. That number for those who are interested, the fax-on-demand 
phone system number is 1-800-454-3114. The fax-on-demand phone system number is 
1-800-454-3114.

RACHEL: Mike, this is Rachel just jumping in for a second.

MIKE: I thought you might have gone to sleep.

RACHEL: I'm listening and taking notes. I just wanted to let everybody know that 
all of these resources Mike is mentioning, after the conclusion of this Web cast 
when we archive it, we will add these resources.

MIKE: Oh, great.

RACHEL: And it is especially important in case you mention a web page because 
those are nearly impossible for the real-time captioner to get correctly.

MIKE: Oh, okay.

RACHEL: So go ahead and give out the numbers and everything, and we will get 
them up on the archived page. So if people aren't able to write them down, don't 
panic.

MIKE: Okay.

RACHEL: Back to you.

MIKE: I appreciate that, Rachel. Just a final -- a couple of final thoughts. 
We've also recently enhanced our website in the little office I work in, the 
Aviation Consumer Protection Division, to ensure that it meets all the 
accessibility standards under Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. And our 
website for those who are interested, and I know this will be able to be 
accessed as Rachel said just now, but it's http://airconsumer.ost.dot.gov. So 
that's the website if you want to find out any of the informational literature. 
There are forms on there on how to file a complaint. Find out your rights. Get 
copies of Part 382. You name it. It's a pretty good site. It's my understanding 
it's one of the more heavily trafficked Web site of the Federal government.

RACHEL: Is there information there about Air 21 as well?

MIKE: I don't know that there is specific reference to Air 21 other than the 
fact that we have amended the New Horizons booklet that I alluded to earlier to 
mention the fact that as a result of Air 21 we have extended the applicability 
of the overriding Air Carrier Access Act to foreign airlines. I don't know that 
we get into much detail about Air 21. That was a gigantic bill. It's about two 
inches long and it involved an awful lot of things not germane to this 
discussion. I think there might be some passing references to it but not a whole 
lot of detail.

RACHEL: Okay.

MIKE: Finally, we also continue in my office we place a very high priority on 
discussing disability issues during monthly meetings we have with carrier reps. 
We have up to 17 carriers have to now report various information to DOT which 
forms the basis of a report we put out on a monthly basis. It's called the Air 
Travel Consumer Report and most of the 17 carriers that have to provide 
information about their mishandled baggage and their on-time performance and 
their oversells and complaint data come into our office on a monthly basis and 
we go over not only individual complaints, but patterns and practices and trends 
that we've detected where we think maybe they need to take a look at either a 
particular airport or some particular issue that they may have a 
misunderstanding about what our rule provides. So we have monthly meetings with 
the airlines in our office here, and during those meetings, disability issues 
get among the highest priority in our discussions with the airline 
representatives, and as I mentioned earlier, to the extent we find there is a 
policy or procedure we don't think is in compliance with our rules, we work with 
the airlines to make sure that there is some -- a prompt corrective action. I 
probably should mention the office that I work in is part of an enforcement 
office. We do in fact have the authority to enforce a whole myriad of 
regulations among them being the Air Carrier Access Act. Having said that, the 
basic philosophy of my office, the Aviation Consumer Protection Division is to 
work informally, kind of in conjunction with the airline to resolve problems. We 
would rather call up an airline, outline a problem that's been relayed to us 
either by phone, E-mail, fax, you name it, and see if we can get a prompt 
resolution, than no offense to our attorneys, get our enforcement attorneys 
involved in a more formal manner. Most of our stuff that we get here at DOT is 
in fact handled on an informal basis, although occasionally as I mentioned 
earlier, do have to resort to enforcement in some areas as in the Air Carrier 
Access Act regulations orders I mentioned we assess civil penalties. The basic 
philosophy is to take prompt informal corrective action before we have to resort 
to getting our attorneys involved with the airline attorneys and working through 
things more formally.

Just finally with regard to some future projects, we just recently selected a 
contractor to develop a model complaint-resolution training program. We awarded 
a contract recently to a company called the Keybridge Foundation of Washington 
D. C. to develop a technical assistance manual and a model training program on 
disability issues. So that at some point in the next year or so there should be 
a technical assistance manual and a model training program that hopefully will 
give some guidance to the industry and to the consumers about what their rights 
are and what carriers should do in protecting the civil rights of folks with 
disabilities.

Finally, the department is planning to issue a quarterly or perhaps semiannual 
disability newsletter and to discuss recent issues of interest to the disability 
community which could touch on any of the types of investigative enforcement, 
rule-making and outreach activities that I just summarized. So all in all, the 
last year to year and a half has been a real busy and challenging one at DOT 
with regard to disability issues. Our intention is to continue working with the 
disability community, the airline associations such as the air transport 
association, Regional Airline Association, National Council on Disability, 
paralyzed veterans and other groups and to ensure that the nation's air 
transportation is in fact truly accessible to everyone. So with that, that's 
kind of an overview of some of the activities we've been involved in in the last 
year to year and a half and I'd be happy to attempt to answer any questions. If 
I don't know them as I told Rachel earlier, I will make up answers as I need to. 
So if anybody has any questions, please --

RACHEL: Don't believe him everybody. Don't believe him. He knows what he's 
talking about. Okay, well the questions are coming in. So I'm going to start -- 
there are two questions about international flights.

MIKE: Okay.

RACHEL: and I do think that to some extent you've answered the first one, but it 
looks like people would like a repeat. So the first one is what are passengers' 
rights when traveling outside the country? And they were specifically interested 
in, if it's airlines like Quantis or El Al, must they comply with the Air 
Carrier Access Act when their flights originate in the U.S?

MIKE: Okay. Just briefly to recap, if you're on a U.S. carrier, a carrier like 
American Airlines or United Airlines, regardless of where you're flying wherever 
it is in the world, that airline, a U.S. carrier would have to comply with the 
service related provisions of our rule. They'd have to provide emplaning and 
deplaning assistance and connection assistance in airports, etc. With regard to 
foreign airlines, the underlying regulation, Part 382 does not yet apply to 
foreign airlines. However, effective April 5th of 2000, as I mentioned, the 
overriding law, which is frankly a very brief law, that essentially says thou 
shalt not discriminate in commercial air transportation against an individual 
with a disability. That overriding law does in fact now apply to foreign 
airlines, and in fact after that law came out on April 5th, 2000, a little bit 
after that within a couple of weeks, DOT issued a notice to all the foreign 
airlines operating to and from the U.S, putting them on notice that we expect 
them to look to the provisions of Part 382 for guidance as to what we would 
expect them to do in a case-by-case situation.

So briefly, although the underlying rule Part 382 does not specifically apply to 
a foreign carrier even on a flight to or from the U.S, when we get a complaint 
about a foreign airline, we look to the provisions of Part 382 to see what we 
would maybe anticipate the foreign carrier to have done. I'm not saying we can 
quote chapter and verse from Part 382, if we're talking to a foreign airline, 
but we do look at it for guidance as to what we would expect them to do. 
Obviously, we're in a little bit of a gray area here because as I said Part 382 
does not apply to the foreign airlines yet. We are rapidly coming to the 
conclusion of putting out a draft rule, which will really put out a lot more 
specificity about which sections of Part 382 are in fact mandatory for the 
foreign carriers to follow. Once that rule-making process is completed, we will 
in fact have one rule, most of the revisions of which apply to both U.S. and 
foreign carriers. So I think in answer to the question when we get a complaint 
now about a foreign airline, we have to unfortunately kind of look on each case-
by-case basis to see if on the face of it the alleged activity is so egregious 
that it violates the intent of the Air Carrier Access Act. That is, is it 
somehow discriminatory on the face of it, is it denying someone access to that 
carrier's transportation services, are they making that person do something 
completely ridiculous, those kinds of things. So we're in a little bit of a 
difficult situation now in that Part 382 itself doesn't apply but we are using 
that as guidance to evaluate the complaints we have in hand. I hope that answers 
the question.

RACHEL: I hope so, too. If not, I invite people to write in for clarification or 
additional information.

MIKE: As we discussed earlier, Rachel, if the answers that I'm giving now don't 
answer questions or if people don't get a chance to ask questions because of 
time constraints, they can either through you or however, they can pose those 
questions and we'd be happy to get back to them as soon as we can and answer 
them either by phone or E-mail.

RACHEL: Sounds good. Let's see if we can run through a bunch of these because 
they're just coming in. This next one is also about international flights. 
Somebody recently experienced discrimination on an international trip and it 
sounds like it was so severe this person says it resulted in their not being 
able to complete the trip. So she has filed a complaint and was told that she 
could file a civil action. So she wants to know if it's worth pursuing and, if 
so, how can she fine an attorney with the proper expertise?

MIKE: Okay. Not to be coy, but when she says worth pursuing, I'm not sure if the 
implicit question in there is if she's looking for something in the way of 
compensation, I don't really necessarily want to give her advice on that. The 
intent of our office is to make sure that both U.S. and foreign carriers comply 
with the Air Carrier Access Act and Part 382. To the extent a carrier is 
discriminating against someone or does something inappropriate, we will take 
action to make sure their policies and procedures are in compliance with the 
rule. We do not have the statutory authority to mandate compensation directly to 
individuals. So if the implicit question is whether DOT could require 
compensation even if a carrier conceded they violated the Air Carrier Access 
Act, we don't have the authority to do that. A corollary question that might be 
posed by folks is whether they do or do not have the authority to sue either a 
U.S. or foreign airline. I have to say I'm not an attorney. It might be good if 
Blane were here. She could probably chime in on this; but my understanding is 
that in various court jurisdictions in the U.S, some courts have found that 
individuals do in fact have a private right of action to take legal action 
against an airline for alleged violations of the Air Carrier Access Act, whereas 
it's my understanding some court jurisdictions have ruled they do not have a 
private right of action. I don't exactly know where that stands. What I would 
recommend that those folks do is to contact the local clerk of the court in 
their jurisdiction, and see if they might answer that question. It might entail 
them actually finding an attorney. Most of the time when you call the clerk of 
the court, it's my understanding they're not real receptive in giving legal 
advice over the phone so she might have to find an attorney who is willing to do 
the legal research in their circuit. How to do that I can't really give her 
advice. Whether she can look in the Yellow Pages or just through word of mouth 
find out somebody who does that kind of tort action involving airlines, I don't 
have a list of those. She might have to do that through her own local efforts 
I'm afraid.

RACHEL: Great. Thank you. And if this person has additional questions that are 
appropriate for Blane, feel free to send that in. Okay, moving on, this comes 
from somebody who was on a Southwest Airlines flight. She wears wrist braces 
because of pain, and she had been -- she was sitting in the exit row, and at the 
last minute after everybody was seated, she was told that she needed to move. It 
was quite embarrassing, and she ended up sitting in the back facing backwards. 
You know, Southwest has seats that face both forward and backward, and her 
question is, shouldn't she have been accommodated with a better place to sit and 
shouldn't she have been accommodated earlier to avoid this last minute bad seat 
and embarrassing situation?

MIKE: I'm assuming, not looking at this complaint, I'm assuming that Southwest 
had concerns about her being able to meet the functional criteria that are 
outlined by the FAA in their exit row rule.

RACHEL: Yes that, is what it sounds like.

MIKE: The FAA have certain functional criteria and you have to perform, such as 
reaching the exit expeditiously, having manual dexterity in both legs and both 
hands in order to operate and deploy the exit. It goes on and on about all the 
things you have to do from a physical perspective in order to be eligible to sit 
in the exit row. Assuming that the carrier's fundamental determination that she 
could not perform those functions was a reasonable one, I can't really address 
for her -- as far as the timing, oftentimes it isn't unfortunately until just 
before push back that an airline flight attendant might notice someone who has 
been seated in an exit row and maybe questions their capability of performing 
the functions, particularly in the case of Southwest because they don't offer 
advanced seat assignments and they basically board you on a first come first 
serve basis. As you queue up to get in line, they give you a boarding card and 
board you by sections. And it might be in Southwest's particular case that they 
would not have any way of knowing until right before the flight that an 
individual happened to be seated in the exit row. So perhaps -- I'm not sticking 
up for Southwest, necessarily -- but they may not have been able to tell until 
right before the flight unlike an airline that gave you advanced seat assignment 
whether or not you were going to be sitting in the exit row and could perform 
the functions.

With regard to the questions of where she was seated, the only thing I can say 
is that I know the Southwest flights. I take them occasionally myself. They are 
awfully full. It might have been because of the fact they wanted to move her 
from the exit row at the last minute, maybe all the other seats were taken other 
than the one she was given. And my personal experience with Southwest, if I 
understood that she said she had to sit in the back facing the back -- I thought 
the only row that faced backwards was the front bulkhead row where the front 
seats kind of face each other. So I can't -- I would rather either have her send 
it in and we can refer it to the airline or give the airline itself an 
opportunity to respond as to how they handled the actual situation.

RACHEL: I think like you were saying, it's likely, in part, sort of an etiquette 
issue here. I do fly Southwest a lot and they do have those backward facing 
seats throughout the plane.

MIKE: I guess I haven't had the pleasure of having one of those.

RACHEL: Lucky you. OK, the next question I'm not sure I understand it 
completely, but I'll give it to you, as I understand it. This comes from 
somebody who because of -- I think this comes from a woman -- because of her 
disability; she's unable to put her bag underneath the seat or to lift it into 
the overhead.

MIKE: Okay.

RACHEL: And she said that usually the flight attendants let her leave it at her 
feet. The last trip, however, the flight attendant said she had to put it under 
the seat in front of her and insisted that FAA regulations require that. So in 
this case, would the FAA trump the -- the way she phrases it is would the FAA 
trump the Air Carrier Access Act?

MIKE: Well, in general terms, safety is the number one priority at DOT. So in 
quick answer to one of her questions, yes, legitimate safety questions do in 
fact, if you want to call it that, trump the Air Carrier Access Act. Having said 
that, there is a specific provision in our rule and if she wants to look on our 
Web site, she can look at section 382.39(b)(5) which says that airlines have to 
assist passengers in loading and retrieving carry-on items, whether or not it's 
a mobility aid. So if she identifies herself as being disabled and asks for 
assistance in loading any carry-on item, it's incumbent on the airline to 
actually stow that for her. Whether it's in the overhead or in the seat, that 
still has to be in compliance with the FAA carry-on regulation, but if one of 
her questions is should they have assisted her, the quick answer is if she's 
unable because of a disability to stow a carry-on herself and identifies herself 
as disabled, it's incumbent on the carrier to stow it for her. I can't really 
address why they would have mandated that it be in the seat as opposed to in an 
overhead. Perhaps the overheads were full. I don't know, but the bottom line is 
that she does have to comply with the FAA carry-on safety considerations, but 
the airline, if she's identifying herself as disabled, has to assist her in 
stowing it in an FAA approved area.

RACHEL: Okay, great. I have a handful of questions actually that come from 
people who are blind and use guide dogs.

MIKE: Okay.

RACHEL: So I'll give these to you one after another. Okay, this man says that 
when making travel reservations by telephone, he's been told repeatedly that he 
must sit in the bulkhead seat with his dog.

MIKE: All right.

RACHEL: He said that's inappropriate for him, but wants to know what complaint 
mechanism he can follow when making reservations? Is there anything equivalent 
to a CRO for reservations?

MIKE: Yes. Briefly, it is not appropriate to demand that someone with a guide 
dog sit in the bulkhead. In our regulation, I hate to keep referring to specific 
provisions, but it's sometimes helpful for folks so they're armed with 
information, if they look on our website and look at section 382.38 (a)(3)

RACHEL: Can you repeat that?

MIKE: 382.38 and (a) (3) which essentially says if you're traveling with a 
service animal, the carrier should provide you either a bulkhead seat or a seat 
other than a bulkhead seat at the passenger's request and the reason for that is 
during the rule-making leading up to this rule, a lot of the comments we got 
from folks who are blind said their dogs were trained to curl up under a seat in 
front of them, therefore, they do not want to be relegated to the bulkhead, but 
an awful lot of the comments came in from the other side of the fence also from 
blind folks saying, hey, our dogs are in fact trained to sit in the bulkhead. 
They are more comfortable there. We built a provision in the rule that said that 
the airlines have to give someone with a service animal, provided it does not 
block the access to the aisle or an exit area that needs to be cleared for 
emergency evacuation purposes, they have to give the individual passenger him or 
herself the priority seat either in bulkhead or in a seat other than bulkhead at 
the passenger's choice. Having said that, what I would suggest they do is they 
call an airline, particularly one that provides advanced seat accommodations, 
which most do other than for example Southwest, which does not, and they're told 
sorry you must sit in a particular seat and they don't think that's appropriate, 
my recommendation would be to ask to speak to -- here I have come back to one of 
these abbreviations -- a CRO or complaint resolution official. Go over the 
problem and ask them if maybe they can intercede and have it fixed. If after 
doing that, they can't do that, the CRO or the airline representative says, I'm 
sorry, you're stuck with this seat; we're not going to help you, they can either 
call our disability hotline or they can E-mail us in my office at the E-mail I 
gave earlier and we would be happy to investigate the complaint. We investigate 
every complaint that we receive from consumers involving issues. They've got a 
bunch of mechanisms, either appealing directly to the airline complaint 
resolution official, which is what I recommend as a first step and in the vast 
majority of the cases that will fix the problem. If it doesn't and they still 
feel as though they're not getting an appropriation accommodation indication, 
they can contact our hotline or write or E-mail us and we will take it up with 
the carrier to see if in fact there might be some reason. Either the carrier has 
a misunderstanding about the rule or isn't implementing it appropriately.

RACHEL: Okay. So then is what you're saying that a CRO is available not only in 
the airport, but also through reservations?

MIKE: Right, we would expect in a situation like this if an airline is offering 
advanced seat assignments and they are in the view of the consumer he or she 
feels they are not being given an adequate accommodation that they're entitled 
to, under the air carrier access rule, we would expect an airline in a fairly 
timely manner to make on request a CRO available over the phone. As you might 
look at in section 382.65 of our rules, that mandates that carriers that provide 
scheduled service have a complaint resolution mechanism. They have to make a CRO 
available either in person at the airport any time they're doing business at the 
airport or if the person -- the CRO isn't physically available at the airport, 
by phone at no cost to the consumer, and similarly, if the actual fundamental 
problem is something during the reservation process, we would expect the airline 
to react to it over the phone as opposed to saying sorry we're not going to deal 
with this until flight day. We would rather these things be resolved in advance. 
It's just better for everybody, the consumer, the airline and it saves me a lot 
of paperwork, too.

RACHEL: Okay. We'll do it to help you out.

MIKE: Thank you, Rachel.

RACHEL: Okay, now this comes from somebody else who is blind. This one just 
seems silly. This is about -- they've had difficulty with meet and assist 
service where -- you know, when they arrive somewhere the person who meets and 
assists them is provided by somebody whose primary language is clearly not 
English, and they -- this person has actually been told by a casual observer 
that the meet and greet person was resorting to pointing in an attempt to 
communicate. Basically, communication was almost impossible between the person 
who was blind and the service person.

And when this person asked an airline employee about it, he or she received a 
gruff response that basically the airline had no obligation to provide services 
in English. Is this true?

MIKE: Well, there is not a specific requirement in our rule that mandates that 
the people who provide services on behalf of the airlines, contract employees 
that would be, speak English. Having said that, although airlines are free to 
contract out services, and most do, they are free do that. They may not contract 
away their responsibility for complying with Part 382 and the Air Carrier Access 
Act. Therefore, if in fact the fact that a contractor may have English as a 
second or third language and they're not actually conversant in it, and that 
actually impacts their ability to provide a service mandated by our rule, then 
arguably we would have the authority to call the airline and say, hey, this 
person, if they are in fact a public contact employee, they are supposed to be 
trained according to the duties of their position. The allegation is this person 
is so bad as far as communicating in English, can you please work with that 
person so that in fact if it's impeding their ability to provide an 
accommodation mandated by our rule that they get some training or in some other 
way get up to speed in the English language so it isn't a problem. But the quick 
answer is our rule doesn't mandate that contractors speak English. It does 
mandate if airlines choose to use contractors, they do provide emplaning and 
deplaning services in a timely and accessible manner.

RACHEL: Okay, now somebody else who uses a guide dog is planning to travel to 
Europe with the dog, but is nervous because they've been told that when they 
return to the United States, customs officials here have the authority to 
quarantine the dog. Is this true? Are there any regulations which would prevent 
this?

MIKE: I have not heard that U.S. customs officials quarantine dogs. There are 
several countries, the UK, among others, that have strict quarantine rules, most 
of which are even applicable to service animals. I was not aware coming from a 
foreign point into the U.S. that that's a problem. And again I'm not sure of the 
source of this information. Perhaps this person got a snippet of information 
that is not accurate. I'm not really sure. Unless I had some further detail like 
where they were coming from or what the source of their information is, it's a 
little hard for me to react to it. I do this all day long and have handled 
thousands of complaints. I have not heard a complaint alleging that the U.S. 
customs are quarantining as a routine practice service animals. So it's hard for 
me to react to that. But if that person -- if it actually happened to them and 
they want the send us a complaint describing it or call me or E-mail us, we can 
discuss it once we get little further information from them.

RACHEL: Okay. Then this last question in this genre of questions is sort of 
similar. It says when traveling abroad things go fine with the guide dog, but 
he's been told that when he's returning to the United States he may be required 
to put his dog in the baggage compartment. Are there any U.S. regulations that 
might prevent this? Again, it's not clear here which airline he's flying on.

MIKE: I was going to try to clarify. If he doesn't specify U.S. or foreign, in 
most instances if he's flying a U.S. carrier, in most cases it would not be 
appropriate to mandate that a passenger with a bona fide service animal put the 
animal in the belly of the plane unless the animal is so large it actually 
blocked access to an aisle or other emergency evacuation area. Our rule actually 
provides that if for some reason the animal is very large and it would block 
access or encroach significantly on the foot space of another passenger, the 
first thing we ask the U.S. carrier to do is move the passenger if there is a 
place on the plane to do this to another area on the plane so that that would 
not be a problem. That would be with regard to U.S. carriers. That should not be 
happening with U.S. carriers other than the rare instance that the animals are 
very large. And I have dealt with some of those, where you've got a 100-pound 
service dog in a smaller aircraft or a full flight where a few times they've had 
to be put in the belly, but the passenger has understood that, that it is 
essentially for safety reasons. With regard to foreign airlines, I have to be 
frank, foreign carriers' policies right now are somewhat more restrictive than 
U.S. carriers, principally because the underlying rule, Part 382 doesn't 
specifically apply to them. I can only tell you in brief terms DOT is aware 
through some complaints that the foreign carriers' policies seem to be more 
strict than the U.S. carriers, and unless there is an underlying regulation of 
the foreign entity governing that carrier, for example, the government of 
France, Great Britain, etc. that would mandate some specific restrictions 
involving a service animal, we would probably ask the foreign carrier to comply 
with the intent of the Air Carrier Access Act. So we're in the preliminary 
stages here at DOT of looking into the kind of policies that foreign airlines 
have with regard to service animals and we're going to be having a very close 
look at this real soon when we put out the rule-making that's going to extend 
Part 382 to the foreign airlines. And we're going to basically put them on 
notice that unless there is a legitimate underlying regulation or law from the 
foreign governing entity saying that either a dog has to be muzzled or put in 
the belly of the plane or what have you, in most cases we are probably going to 
be asking the foreign carriers, in fact, mandating that the foreign carriers 
comply with the same kind of much less restrictive requirements that are now 
applicable for U.S. airlines.

RACHEL: All right, well it's good that we have that to look forward to down the 
line.

MIKE: Yep.

RACHEL: Okay, next question comes from somebody who uses a wheelchair; and he 
wants to know if the airline can force him to transfer to a wheelchair when he's 
changing planes or can he request to remain in the aisle chair so as to avoid 
multiple physical transfers?

MIKE: Our regulation does in fact require airlines to provide deplaning 
assistance and assistance within airports to get to connecting flights. Although 
I can understand his position, he would probably like to minimize the number of 
transfers, in most cases the reason airlines want to transfer you into -- for 
lack of a better term -- a regular wheelchair from the aisle chair is that they 
are much more stable and implicitly probably safer. Provided they do the 
connecting assistance in a timely and safe manner, I don't know that we would 
necessarily feel it's inappropriate to ask the person to transfer from the aisle 
chair into the wheelchair. I've been to many, many, airline CRO training classes 
and they go over this very much as far as the proper transfer techniques. Don't 
get me wrong, I've looked at complaints where individuals have been 
inadvertently bruised or injured in the transfer process, but airlines are very 
aware of the need to transfer folks in a safe and dignified manner and in most 
cases can do that without any problems. I'm not sure we would mandate that a 
carrier not use the traditional method of just using the aisle chair which as 
most of you know is a very narrow chair just for getting up and down the actual 
aisle of the aircraft until you get into either the jet bridge or the gate area 
and then transfer you into a wheelchair, particularly in light of the fact that 
in many cases you're actually going between concourses, you may be going a 
quarter of a mile or so or more, or at a minimum, transferring way from one gate 
-- gate 1 to gate 50 in the same terminal, just speaking for me, that would seem 
to be more safe in a regular wheelchair than trying to do it in an aisle chair. 
They're just -- they're not as -- they're not designed to be transferring folks 
long distances as opposed to a regular wheelchair. Now, that doesn't say if the 
person said they would rather stay in the aisle chair, there is nothing probably 
prohibiting an airline from honoring his request, but I can tell you in a 
traditional sense most carriers will try to transfer you from the aisle chair to 
the regular airport wheelchair for the reasons I just went over.

RACHEL: Okay. Well, that's helpful. Our next question comes from somebody who is 
a quad and needs help with meals, and he wants to know if airlines are required 
to assist him and additionally, are airlines required to help him in the rest 
room on the plane or the rest room in the airport?

MIKE: Okay. With regard to the first question they are required to assist 
passengers with preparation for eating. By that, I mean opening up food items, 
you know, a milk carton, a can of soda, or for example, if you happen to be 
blind, identifying various things. They are not required to actually do the 
feeding of an individual. So if for some reason an individual who is a 
quadriplegic is not capable of feeding him or herself, it would not be incumbent 
on a flight attendant or other airline employee to do that once they have 
prepared the food, that is maybe opened up the utensils or opened up a bag that 
had the wonderful food that they serve on the airlines. Similarly, although 
airlines are in fact required to get non-ambulatory folks including 
quadriplegics from the seats to the lavatory, their responsibility essentially 
ends at the door to the lavatory, and once they get through, it's incumbent on 
the individual to take care of his or her needs once inside the restroom both 
within the airport as well as within the aircraft.

RACHEL: Okay. So in the airport, somebody may be required to get them to the 
rest room, but certainly not --

MIKE: But not helping them within the rest room with elimination functions, 
that's correct.

RACHEL: Okay, thanks. This is sort of an interesting question. The next one is 
about insensitive treatment vs. discrimination. She says you mentioned that 
alleged insensitive treatment does not fall under the rules.

MIKE: Right.

RACHEL: But when does insensitive treatment cross over into discrimination? And 
she goes on to say that she's heard reports of people in wheelchairs being 
treated quite rudely while non-disabled passengers are treated with respect.

MIKE: If the question is when does insensitivity start becoming a violation of 
the rule? I can only say if it gets to the point that the alleged insensitivity 
results in the employee actually refusing to or significantly delaying providing 
a service required by the rule. So for example if you asked for a wheelchair and 
planing assistance and they brought you a wheelchair immediately and they 
weren't smiling about it, that to me is not a violation of our rule. If the 
person said I'll get to you when I get to you, just sit down and shut up, and 
they don't come back to you for 30 minutes, that's where insensitivity 
encroaches on -- that's a violation of your rights because they're not providing 
the service mandated by our rule, and unfortunately as I mentioned earlier, the 
intent of the Air Carrier Access Act is to give disabled folks equal access to 
the nation's air transportation system. And I'm not trying to be flippant, but 
even folks in wheelchairs or who have other disabilities receive poor service 
just like non-disabled folks sometimes receive it. So in that sense maybe they 
are getting the same level of service that everybody is getting.

RACHEL: Okay, that's a nice commentary on some of our airlines. Well, I know it 
seems like there are some places where you were mentioning -- some places in the 
rule that mentioned providing a certain service with dignity and discretion. So 
what are the areas of service where such things are mentioned, where, you know, 
some rudeness may actually be closer to a violation?

MIKE: We don't actually use the word sensitivity or rudeness that I can think of 
in the regulations; but just implicitly throughout the rule as well as in the 
preamble to the rule which was an explanatory section of the rule when it was 
first issued in the Federal Register, it's very clear if you look at the intent 
of the regulation, the intent of the Air Carrier Access Act, although we may not 
have used the term do all this in a sensitive way and in a safe way, you can 
tell by the way the whole thing is crafted, we expect, airlines not only to 
provide the service but to do it in a safe and dignified and sensitive manner. 
Those terms are not used, but they are implied throughout it.

RACHEL: Okay, great. Here, this next question comes from somebody with a 
mobility disability who traveled to Ireland on an American-based airline, on 
Continental. And she wants to know if it's legal for the people in Dublin to 
refuse to bring a power wheelchair to the plane and insist that she use one of 
their chairs to get to baggage claim?

MIKE: Only if they bring you a Guinness instead of the wheelchair - no 
seriously, if the passenger him or herself asks to bring the wheelchair back as 
close to the door of the plane as is physically feasible, it's required that 
they do that. Many passengers would prefer for various reasons to have -- to be 
reunited with their assistive device at baggage claim, but if they -- rather ask 
the carrier to bring the chair as close to the door of the plane as possible, it 
is in fact incumbent on the airline to do it.

RACHEL: Now, what if they are in Dublin, should there be a CRO available to 
them?

MIKE: Yes, either in person at all times they are doing business at the airport 
or at a minimum at no cost to the passengers by phone.

RACHEL: Okay, great. Somebody is looking for some clarification about what the 
rule says about providing oxygen, and let's see, there are three points: Does 
the airline have to provide oxygen? Can the passenger bring his or her own 
oxygen? And does the airline need a permit from an authority to allow oxygen on 
board?

MIKE: the answers are basically no, no, and yes. Airlines are prohibited from 
allowing you to bring your own oxygen. There is an FAA safety regulation which 
off the top of my head is14CFR1201.74. It is an FAA regulation that essentially 
says carriers can only allow folks to use oxygen during the flight if it's 
provided by the airline.

RACHEL: Okay.

MIKE: So he may not bring his own oxygen and use it. The second question to 
which I think the answer is no, I've forgotten the question. What was the second 
part of that?

RACHEL: Let's see, do they have to provide it?

MIKE: They do not have to provide it under the rule-- he may not use his own and 
carriers that do in factprovide oxygen --

RACHEL: Do they need a permit from somebody?

MIKE: Well, they have to have a program in place that is essentially a situation 
where they get the oxygen from a ground supplier, but it's inspected by FAA 
folks, so I don't know if you want to call that a permit, but there is a program 
in place for lack of a better term in which the airline provided oxygen is 
inspected by FAA to make sure that it's flight worthy and doesn't pose any kind 
of safety concerns which would obviously be catastrophic once you become 
airborne or could potentially be rather. So there is a program by which the 
airline provided oxygen is inspected for safety considerations by FAA folks.

RACHEL: Okay. I'm mindful of the time. It's 3:15. So we've got about 15 minutes 
left. So I'm going to try to get in as many of these questions as we can. This 
question is a follow-up regarding quarantining service dogs. And they ask 
doesn't Hawaii quarantine service dogs other than guide dogs? I know there was a 
settlement regarding the issue, but it specifically -- actually I think this 
word is wrong -- I think what they mean is that it specifically did not include 
guide dogs.

MIKE: Right.

RACHEL: So she wants to know if she traveled to Hawaii with her service dog, 
would she fall under that settlement? I'm not clear actually from this though if 
this is somebody who has a service dog whose a guide dog or different kind of 
dog.

MIKE: I can tell you in general terms, I'm not an expert on quarantine law. 
Having said that, it's my understanding that yes it's a fundamental matter that 
there is a law on quarantining animals in general in Hawaii. Many of the 
restrictions normally applicable to flying into and out of Hawaii have been 
greatly relaxed in the context of the service animals provided the consumer does 
a whole lot of advanced work in preparation of the trip. And again, I'd be happy 
to get back and refer this person to websites that can give you chapter and 
verse on how to do this, but essentially it's my understanding you need to in 
advance of the trip have your dog inspected by veterinarians. I think you have 
to have some sort of paperwork showing your dog has up to date inoculations for 
a variety of things like rabies, et cetera. It's also my understanding that the 
dog has to have implanted in one of the ears a microchip just in the event for 
some reason the dog escaped or whatnot, that they could track the dog down. My 
point being it's my understanding that although there are some quarantine laws 
in Hawaii they've been restricted provided the consumer jumps through frankly a 
lot of hoops in advance so that the health officials in Hawaii have been assured 
that you've done a lot of stuff so that they're not concerned that the dog could 
in any way transmit rabies or other diseases to other animals. It's my 
understanding this is not something you can do in a few weeks before a flight. 
If they would E-mail me, I can connect them with a site that will give them the 
list of things that will greatly reduce the hassle of going into Hawaii with a 
service animal, provided the consumers are willing to go through some 
preliminary steps that I mentioned about making sure the dog has paper work that 
the dog is up to speed on all its inoculations and has one of these microchips 
inserted.

RACHEL: Maybe after this, if you give me those websites, then I'll go ahead and 
post them on the archive page so that everybody will be able to access them. 
Sounds like

MIKE: I'd be happy to do that.

RACHEL: -- good information. I have a question here and I'm actually -- I need 
more information from the person who sent it in. It just came in. It says -- 
it's about American Airlines refusing them to -- refusing to allow this person 
to pre-board with other disabled passengers. I'm not sure what -- I don't have 
more details than that; but they're saying how often do airlines deny -- I'm not 
sure. But they basically then are asking at the end, the thing you might be able 
to answer, is are there any airlines which are more sensitive to the rights of 
people with disabilities?

MIKE: Okay, the consumer that sent this isn't by any chance -- the last name 
isn't Strummer, is it?

RACHEL: Not that I can tell.

MIKE: Okay, just thought I'd ask. In general terms, there is not a specific 
provision in our rule that mandates pre-boarding for folks with disabilities. 
Other than in two specific contexts: One is if you want to get on an aircraft 
and stow a folding manual wheelchair in the passengers cabin, in the passenger 
cabin there is a requirement that aircraft -- that if it has -- if it has a 
space big enough to accommodate one passenger's folding wheelchair and the 
passenger is willing to pre-board, the carrier has to allow that person priority 
stowage space in the cabin. So implicitly there, since our rule makes it 
incumbent on the passenger to pre-board, in a sense, the reverse of that is does 
it mandate the airline to permit them to pre-board. So one instance in which 
pre-boarding is in fact mandated is in a situation where someone is putting his 
or her folding wheelchair in the passenger cabin. 

That passengers has to be willing to pre-board otherwise they take their chances 
on whether their wheelchair will fit once all the other passengers have put 
their carry-on items in the compartments in the plane. The other situation which 
it's mandatory to allow preboarding is in the context of a carrier that does not 
provide advanced seat assignments. For example -- and I am not picking on them, 
they are a great airline Southwest airlines. they do not provide advanced seat 
assignments. The way that they comply with the seating accommodations of our 
rule is they allow preboarding of folks with disabilities. So, in other words, 
it would not be proper for Southwest or a carrier that does not offer 
preboarding to say to someone who is entitled to a particular seating 
accommodation, sorry, but we're not going to let you pre-board. If that then 
turned out to result in you not getting the seat you are entitled to. In general 
terms, it is my understanding, 

I do a fair amount of traveling, most carriers, even though they're not mandated 
now to require reboarding, most of them because frankly it's probably easier for 
everybody if you need perhaps a little more time to get down the jet bridge or a 
little more time to get settled in your seat and ask for help getting your 
carry-on items stowed, most carriers as a practice voluntarily now provide 
preboarding just as a customer service gesture for consumers. I can't really 
comment on whether some carriers are more sensitive in that area. It's my 
understanding that most of them have pretty standard policies and will in fact 
allow preboarding unless there is some unique situation going on.

RACHEL: Okay. Let's see, I just have a few more questions. Here is one, does the 
Air Carrier Access Act have requirements for retractable arm rests in first 
class?

MIKE: the quick answer is not necessarily; but what the rule requires is that on 
aircraft that have to have those, which again are new aircraft with 30 or more 
seats, they have to have removable aisle arm rests on half of the aisle seats. 
If in fact they can reach that 50 percent standard by putting them in places 
other than first class, they arguably are complying with the letter of the law. 
Having said that, DOT is considering perhaps amending that part of the rule when 
we put out this future rule that will apply to the foreign carriers to perhaps 
have some sort of proportional distribution of the removable arm rests in all 
classes of service because the implicit question there is if you're disabled and 
you need a movable arm rest, right now in many instances you're in a sense 
regulated to the back of the bus. That is not the intent of the rule, although 
the rule doesn't really specifically state in the ordering paragraphs of the 
rule that these movable arm rests have to be in certain places in the aircraft 
provided they are there. In most cases, it's my -- not that I ever fly first 
class, I only see it from the back, but it's my understanding that in most cases 
first class seats arm rests are not movable because they usually have these 
integrated food trays and sexy video systems and whatnot. Having said that, 
because there is obviously a lot bigger pitch in first class, most airlines 
argue you do have the same access or let me put it this way ease of transfer 
from an aisle chair into a first class seat because in first class there is a 
lot more space between your knees and the back of the seat in front of you than 
in the economy section.. It's something we're considering taking a look at in 
this future rule-making.

RACHEL: Is the sole purpose of a retractable arm to promote ease of transferring 
or are there additional reasons?

MIKE: Essentially, yeah, the main reason we think it's great to have movable arm 
rests is to ease the transfer from the aisle chair into the seat and that 
eliminates the need to physically lift somebody from the aisle chair over a 
fixed arm rest and then actually then settle them back down in the aircraft seat 
because we've had a significant number of complaints that seem to indicate that 
if the arm rest had moved, that we wouldn't have situations where people are 
inadvertently dropped and bruised because it's difficult enough transfer when 
it's a level transfer with a movable arm rest than to do that same thing with a 
fixed arm rest where you have to lift them up over the fixed arm rest.

RACHEL: Another question I have here is from somebody -- I'm paraphrasing this. 
Forgive me the person who sent it in, but it's a long E-mail. It gives lots of 
detail which is helpful; but I'm going to paraphrase. This basically comes from 
somebody who was forced to have someone travel with her, but she says really 
what they did is they put somebody from the airline to sit by her. And she 
travels by herself all the time, so what could she do in this position?

MIKE: I'm assuming from this that the consumer did not want to travel with an 
attendant to begin with or she would have shown up with an attendant. Is that 
your understanding?

RACHEL: Right. And also she does say in her details that she flies by herself 
all the time.

MIKE: Okay. We have a section in our rule that outlines four specific provisions 
in which it's arguably acceptable for an airline to require an attendant for 
safety evacuation reasons and for those who are interested it's section 382.85 
of our rule, you can read the rule the various situations in which it's arguably 
okay to ask someone to fly with an attendant. Among those would be for example 
someone who has a mobility impairment so severe that they cannot assist in their 
evacuation. Now, occasionally we've had complaints from folks from paraplegics 
who have full use of their upper body but they simply are not ambulatory. In 
most instances, we would deem those folks as not needing an attendant because 
they can in fact assist in their evacuation. They've got use of their upper 
body. They could pull themselves along seat backs or whatever and assist getting 
off the aircraft. If in fact her issue is that she's got a mobility impairment 
and she feels she can travel without an attendant, but the carrier really feels 
she cannot assist with her evacuation, arguably they would be within their 
rights to require an attendant.

Now, if there is a dispute between the consumer and the airline, the rule 
provides that the airline is supposed to waive the fee for those segments of the 
trip in which a disabled person who does not want to fly with an attendant is 
essentially forced to fly with an attendant because the airline feels it's 
needed for safety reasons. And among the three ways we've suggested in the 
preamble to the rule to resolve these hopefully rare situations, one, they can 
ask the person him or herself if they happen to have a friend or family member 
who can serve as the attendant. Two, they can ask what we call a deadheading 
crew member, that is a crew member who is not working that flight, to sit next 
to the person and serve as a safety attendant or, three, they could discretely 
solicit a volunteer from among the other passengers to serve as the attendant 
and waive the fee for that passenger on those segments in which they are 
accompanying the disabled individual. So not knowing more detail about the 
nature of her disability, those are the three situations in which we've 
suggested these kind of situations be resolved. So it sounds like what the 
carrier did is one that we envisioned as a way around one of these disputes, if 
that is kind of the genesis of what occurred in this particular case.

RACHEL: It does seem that way. Okay, again, everybody who is tuning in and I 
know there are a lot of you because we've been getting a lot of questions, if 
you want additional information about your situation or have additional 
questions you weren't able to get in today, please go ahead and send them on and 
we will do our best to get back to you individually. Mike, before I tie up, are 
there any final comments you'd like to make?

MIKE: No, just that I really appreciate again the opportunity to talk with you 
all, all over the world. I've never had an opportunity to do this. So all of you 
in Australia and France and Timbuktu, it's great chatting with you. Please do 
not hesitate to use our disability hotline. We -- it's there at your beck and 
call, 16 hours a day, so please pass on to your friends and associates the 
opportunity to use that. And as I said, on behalf of the Secretary of 
Transportation, we are very committed to ensuring the civil rights of consumers 
with disabilities We take that job very seriously and we look forward to working 
in that area in the years to come So I appreciate the opportunity to talk with 
you all and if there are any questions that we haven't answered, by all means, 
through Rachel, just pass them on to me and we'll get back to you as soon as we 
can.

RACHEL: Well, thank you so much, Mike. Really, you obviously are very good at 
your job because we just threw questions your way and you rattled off answers 
and --

MIKE: Most of which were made up, Rachel.

RACHEL: SHHH, no, that's not true, people.

MIKE: Are we still on the air? 

RACHEL: That's not true. But really, I mean you've covered and really clarified 
a lot of issues that we hear all the time. And so I hope for folks out there 
that this was helpful. We're giving you some resources that exist now on the 
website. We will provide you with additional resources when this presentation is 
archived, which should be within a couple of days. You'll be able to go back and 
listen and view the real-time captioning and additionally, there will be a 
transcript there that you can download. Please also look at our website for 
listings of additional  Web casts. We're beginning to schedule them in for the 
coming year. So please do go and keep track of those, and if you have ideas of 
the things you'd like to see covered, please go ahead and send those to us as 
well.

And along those lines, we really would love your feedback. It helps us a lot. 
There is an evaluation form on the website, the page that you went to to access 
this Web cast. So if you would please fill out that evaluation form for us, we'd 
love it.

In addition to our super presenter today, Mike, I'd like to thank others who 
have made this possible. Our sponsor for today, again, was the Disability Law 
Resource Project at ILRU. The project is funded through NIDRR to provide 
training, technical assistance, and materials on the ADA and other disability-
related laws.

NIDRR is a part of the Department of Education, and no endorsement of the 
opinions expressed as a part of any of our  Web casts should be inferred.

With that commercial finished, I wanted to let you know that this  Web cast, in 
addition to NIDRR's great support, would not be possible without the efforts of 
our ILRU in-house staff, and they include Marj Gordon, Sharon Finney, Dawn 
Heinsohn, as well as the technical expertise of Rob Dickehuth and the services 
of our real-time captioner, Marie Bryant.

And so, again, thank you everybody for joining us today. Thank you, Mike, and we 
hope to connect with you again on an upcoming Web cast.

MIKE: Sounds great to me.

RACHEL: Okay, bye-bye everybody.