Boeing Refuses to Listen to Passengers With Disabilities

Washington, D.C. – At this week’s Boeing annual meeting, a disability activist with the National Center for Public Policy Research will call out Boeing executives for refusing to establish a Disability Access Committee to improve safety and accessibility for passengers with disabilities.

At Friday’s meeting, Able Americans Director Rachel Barkley, who uses a wheelchair after experiencing a health crisis at age thirty, will ask executives and fellow shareholders to imagine that they too are sitting in wheelchairs, and consider what air travel might look like for them.

Rachel Barkley

She plans to say:

Passengers with disabilities daily face the indignity of Boeing’s aircraft designs. There is, for example, limited or no access to onboard toilets — especially on single aisle aircraft. This means many passengers with disabilities are forced to wear adult diapers for the duration of their flights.

Many designs make accessing onboard seats difficult. This makes boarding and deplaning frustrating and sometimes dangerous events, which can even result in death.

Current designs mean passengers with disabilities must surrender their personal wheelchairs, which are our legs, at the gate, often resulting in loss and damage. Without our own wheelchairs, we rely upon often untrained airline staff to pick us up and place us in a seat — imagine relying upon a stranger to lift you to your seat!

Representatives from the National Center’s Able Americans project and Free Enterprise Project have both met with Boeing executives asking them to consider these concerns, and have been brushed off.

In response, the National Center submitted a shareholder proposal (Item 4: Board Committee on Disability Access) that will be considered by Boeing shareholders at Friday’s meeting. The proposal requests that Boeing “establish a Board committee to oversee disability access on airplanes, including annually assessing compliance with accessibility laws and regulations and providing a report on the findings to shareholders.”

“Though it’s been more than 30 years since the passage of the Air Carrier Access Act which bars discrimination against people with disabilities, Boeing has consistently ignored the spirit, if not the letter of the law,” Barkley will say. “Management treats accessibility design, at best, as an afterthought.”

In addition to the human dignity element, “we want Boeing to improve plane designs because it is just good business to treat all passengers equally,” Barkley will say. “Passengers with disabilities and their caregivers amount to about 100 million Americans with almost $500 billion in disposable income.”

Barkley plans to conclude her supporting statement by appealing for empathy:

We are asking shareholders to urge management to care. Start by establishing a committee to oversee efforts to improve accessibility. That’s all we are asking for. Fortunate shareholders and management who were sitting in merely imaginary wheelchairs may now get up and move about their able lives. Just don’t forget about those can’t. After all, there but for the grace of God, go you.

Boeing shareholders can support Item 4 by voting their proxies before Friday’s meeting.

About

Able Americans is a nonprofit, nonpartisan project of the National Center for Public Policy Research dedicated to advancing innovative, free-market solutions that empower Americans with intellectual, developmental, and physical disabilities. It advocates for policies that remove barriers, expand individual freedom and choice, and deliver better outcomes for people with disabilities and their caregivers. Its mission is rooted in the belief that opportunity and human dignity are part of the American promise for all people, regardless of ability.

The Free Enterprise Project, the original and premier opponent of the woke takeover of American corporate life, aims to push corporations to respect their fiduciary obligations and to stay out of political and social engineering.

The National Center for Public Policy Research, founded in 1982, is a nonpartisan, free-market, independent conservative think tank. Ninety-four percent of its support comes from individuals, less than four percent from foundations and less than two percent from corporations. It receives over 350,000 individual contributions a year from over 60,000 active recent contributors. Contributions are tax-deductible and may be earmarked for Able Americans and/or the Free Enterprise Project.