TravelAbility Insider

The Intersection of Travel and Disability

Mobility

Savannah Airport Introduces Power Wheelchair for Passengers

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Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport has teamed up with WHILL, an innovative personal transportation solutions company, to provide improved mobility for passengers at the airport. The new service allows passengers to use a WHILL Model C2 power chair to navigate the terminal themselves, including visiting restaurants, shops, and restrooms before heading to their gate. Traditionally, passengers with mobility limitations would be pushed in a wheelchair by airport staff, which does not provide the same level of independence. Read More.

Our Takeaway: With the influx of baby boomers requiring mobility assistance to navigate airports combined with the expense and difficulty recruiting wheelchair assistants, cool products like Whill electric wheelchair can help fill the gap.

Passenger says Air Canada tried to count her Crutches as two Carry-Ons

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One customer says she was subjected to absurdly strict treatment regarding the items she was bringing into the cabin of her overnight flight from Toronto to Paris this month — namely, a set of crutches. Read More.

Our Takeaway: This dismissive attitude is not only harmful to the travel industry’s reputation, it’s completely unjust and removes the ability of the mobility impaired to travel via air. You cannot charge for the ability to walk.

INNOVATEABLE Pitch Fest Showcases 11 Cutting Edge Adaptive Innovations for Travel

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Our Takeaway: For the past four years TravelAbility has hosted LaunchPad, a pitch event curating the best innovations that can help the industry make travel easier for disabled travelers. This year’s event has been rebranded as the InnovateAble Showcase and will be held via Zoom on July 26th from 10AM to 1PM PST to commemorate the 33rd anniversary of the ADA.

“We are excited to bring together some of the brightest minds in assistive technology to showcase their latest innovations,” said Jake Steinman, Founder of TravelAbility. “This is a B2B event and an opportunity to feature entrepreneurs with innovations that can be introduced through the destination channels to their industry partners.”

This year’s pitch event will be held via Zoom. Those interested in attending should contact us at: info@travelability.net.

Delta’s Support of Roll-in Wheelchair Securement System Creates Burst of Hope for Disabled Travelers

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Our Takeaway: The new Wheelchair Securement System unveiled at an annual trade show in Germany gained spectacular credibility once Delta Airlines announced its support.

TravelAbility provided part of the funding that helped advisory board member John Morris’ travel to the Hamburg Aircraft Interiors Show so he would be the first to test drive the securement system in real time.

Here’s what he found:

Delta Flight Products, a subsidiary of Delta Air Lines that was established to re-think aircraft interiors, announced it was backing the Air4All wheelchair securement system on commercial jets — the company plans to unveil its design prototype at the Aircraft Interiors Expo in Hamburg, Germany next week. Chris Wood, my friend and colleague in accessible travel advocacy, is a partner in the Air4All seating product. Last year, he spoke to me about his design innovation — you can watch our conversation here and read my initial reporting on Air4All here. With the announcement that Air4All will debut in Hamburg, I decided that I needed to be there — critical reporting on this product, its advancements, features and opportunities for improvement should come from within the disability community. I look forward to seeing, touching, and testing the Air4All system myself, and sharing my insights with each of you. Read More.

India by Rickshaw:  Leading Provider of Accessible Travel to Build 5000 Accessible Electric Rickshaws

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photo of a blue electric accessible rickshaw

Our Takeaway: Maybe Musk should have invested in EZ MOV rather than Twitter! A wonderful example of how a public-private partnership enhances existing—and familiar—transportation with infrastructure that converts a primitive method of getting from one place to another, in a completely contemporary way.

In the first-ever massive initiative in India to provide wheelchairs in auto rickshaws for physically disabled or mobility-challenged people for ease in travel, Ezy Mov, India’s leading Accessible Transport operator, has partnered with New Delhi-based Goenka Electrical Motors Private Limited (GEM) to manufacture 5,000 accessible wheelchair friendly e-rickshaws over the next two years.

Driven by its mission to realize the future of Accessible Transportation in India for disabled, handicapped or mobility–challenged people, Ezy Mov has plans to bring accessible transport even in the auto rickshaw segment right to the doorsteps of passengers.

Goenka Electric is one of the leading electric rickshaw manufacturers in the country with a wide variety of high-quality E – Rickshaws and Electric Vehicles. Ezy Mov is India’s leading and fastest-growing accessible transport provider with its fleet of on-call wheelchair taxis already plying in India – Mumbai