This weekend, I witness something I’ve never seen before in all my years of flying on passenger jets.
It was a long line of wheelchairs lined up to pre-board an aircraft. I counted 12 people in wheelchairs. There were so many of them, it bottlenecked the concourse.
When the plane arrived, ONLY ONE of those people needed a wheelchair to get off.
Then…just this morning, I read this article from the NY Post that said it happened on another Southwest Airlines flight!
Another frustrating new normal we’re going to have to endure, I’m afraid.
Passengers are known to get antsy boarding and exiting planes, but Paul, whose Twitter handle is @trendready, complained about how some fellow flyers are possibly attempting to game the system by requesting wheelchair assistance in order to be the first ones on a flight before takeoff.
“Pre-boarding scam at @SouthwestAir,” he claimed in a Saturday tweet with a photo of a line of people in wheelchairs. “20 passengers boarding using a wheelchair and probably only 3 need one to deplane.”
The airline replied to the complaint but admitted it had little power to stop any possible trickery.
AC