Craig Nolan has spent 5 days in Melbourne airport after being removed from a Qatar Airways flight. Photo / Supplied, Craig Nolan
Craig Nolan has spent 5 days in Melbourne airport after being removed from a Qatar Airways flight. Photo / Supplied, Craig Nolan
An Australian expat says he was kicked off a plane for ‘flying alone’ and was left stranded in Melbourne Airport with his wheelchair.
Five days later, the passenger is still at the airport waiting for a flight and compensation.
Helsinki-based Craig Nolan said the incident was a first for him and left him feeling “frustrated” as he tried to travel back home to Finland for Christmas.
Nolan, who was born with spina bifida, requires a wheelchair for mobility. Having lived abroad for years he was used to flying as a solo-traveller and had traversed the world without incident until this point.
On Monday he was asked to disembark his Qatar Airways flight from Melbourne to Doha for a reason he thought was odd.
Having been allowed onto the plane and assisted to his seat using the plane’s aisle chair, 10 minutes into boarding he was told by the cabin crew that he would have to get off the plane. He was already seated, when the decision was made to offload him.
When he asked why, Nolan says he was told it was because he was travelling alone.
Talking to SBS the traveller said that he had no option but to get off the plane and wait for his wheelchair to be returned.
The airline paid for one night’s accommodation but only after he insisted there was no public transport and he had nowhere to go.
“All this went down after midnight, so it took quite a lot of pleading to get accommodation for the first night,” he told the Herald. His closest family was more than an hour’s taxi ride away in Geelong, and the last trains had stopped running.
However he is yet to hear a full explanation as to why he was disembarked or an apology from the airline to him and his partner, who is still waiting for him to come home to Helsinki.
Friend Bridget Mullahy who is based in Melbourne said she was shocked to learn what had happened, when Nolan got in touch to say he was stranded at Tullamarine airport.
She said that the airline’s decision to boot Nolan off the plane was clear discrimination against his disability.
“He had been seated, he had his transfer boarding pass and was clearly communicating his simple needs fulfilled by MANY airlines before (without questions or issue). But Qatar decided to discriminate against him, remove him from the plane and strand him in Melbourne!”
To make matters worse, when he finally made it to the Reservations Customer Service to try and rearrange his travel, Nolan was told he would be charged a $400 ‘no show’ fee.
Nolan, who was since told that the plane was not prepared to cater for a traveller in a wheelchair, says that he had indicated when booking that he needed additional assistance. He had not been asked for any more information.
“They tried to tell me that I hadn’t given enough information, that the codes that I entered were wrong,” he told SBS. “I know what the codes are because [of] my background as a travel agent.”
Currently he is still in Australia waiting to rebook travel home and to hear from the airline, which would not rebook him onto another service.
Qatar Airways was contacted by the Herald for comment.
The airline’s website says that passengers requiring wheelchair assistance must inform them “preferably at the time of booking and at least 48 hours prior to departure.”
Nolan who has stayed the past two nights at an airport hotel in Melbourne Tullamarine says that he is still waiting for a refund and to find a suitable flight home.
“I don’t have the funds to get a new flight as we are nearing Christmas, so costs are way up,” Nolan told the Herald.
Craig with his partner in Helsinki, Finland. Photo / Supplied, Bridget Mullahy, Craig Nolan
Currently he is waiting for the airline to agree to compensation, which he says is a matter of principle.
“If I fly home and airline doesn’t compensate, they get away with discrimination and can do it again.”
