Passenger Adilah Adh says she was forced to carry her 8-month daughter on an injured ankle after wheelchair assistance was deemed 'unsafe'.
Passenger Adilah Adh says she was forced to carry her 8-month daughter on an injured ankle after wheelchair assistance was deemed 'unsafe'.
A mother flying solo from Auckland to Fiji was told for safety reasons she could travel with either a wheelchair or her eight-month-old daughter, but not both.
Adilah Ahd was travelling to Nadi with Fiji Airways on February 25, to spend a fortnight of her maternity leave visiting family in the islands with her new child. Four days before flying, Adilah injured her ankle on a staircase at home.
While an X-ray revealed her foot was sprained, not broken, she was in two minds about the trip.
“My feet were so swollen I could barely walk,” she said, but her family said they would be able to look after her and her daughter, in Nadi.
Contacting the airline Fiji Airways told her not to postpone her trip. Ahd was told they would book her wheelchair assistance for her trip, via their airport and check-in service contractor Oacis.
However, it was only after check-in on the day of travel that everything was “turned upside down”. Having handed over her and her daughter’s luggage and stroller she was provided with a wheelchair, which she sat in with her baby on her lap.
Her husband, Shay, was unable to travel with her due to work commitments but had taken them to the airport that Sunday.
They were making their way to departures with a member of the check-in team, when another Oacis staff member shouted at them from behind the counter.
Surprising the young family, the check-in worker told them the baby could not travel on her mother’s lap - ostensibly for safety reasons.
“My husband was, like, ‘Sorry, what do you mean?’” And she says ‘[The] baby can’t go on the wheelchair’”
Her husband asked for a solution, explaining his wife was travelling solo with their daughter and needed wheelchair assistance.
The woman’s advice was to “go home and get better” but Adilah said at this point this seemed like her best option even though she couldn’t cancel her flight and faced losing her fare.
“I couldn’t handle it and I just started crying, all my excitement for the trip just went down the drain,” she said.
Adilah's wheelchair request was revoked "due to safety considerations". Photo / Getty Images
However, when the manager eventually did turn up and they asked to have the baby’s stroller back, Shay and Adilah were told it was already loaded on the plane.
At this point, Ahd made up her mind to take her boarding pass and her daughter to try to catch the flight, anyway.
Walking on her injured ankle, she barely had time to say goodbye to her husband.
Clearly in pain, as she passed through customs Ahd said she had more sympathy and offers of help from other travellers than she did from the check-in agents.
Eventually, after walking the length of the departures lounge and having to move again due to a gate change, she boarded the much-delayed FJ420. There at the gate was the check-in agent and manager, who were apologetic but failed to provide help while she was carrying her daughter through departures on a sprained ankle.
Ahd said Fiji Airways’ customer service was fantastic, but their check-in and airport services agents Oacis let them down.
Oacis chief executive Matthew Lee said their team was not able to provide wheelchair service on this occasion, due to health and safety concerns.
However, as they were contracted to Fiji Airways for passenger services, they were following the airline’s safety policy and procedures.
“The safety and security of our customers are always OACIS’s highest priority,” Lee Lee in a statement to the Herald.
“We can confirm that the customer was advised that, due to safety considerations, it would not be possible for her to be pushed in the wheelchair without an infant/child restraint.”
It was not possible to provide Adilah with either a restraint or additional help to carry her child, at the time.
Oacis NZ was recently engaged as check-in and ground handling agency for Fiji Airways, contracting for the airline at Auckland International.
Fiji Airways website said the airline offered additional support to passengers, including wheelchair assistance, with prior warning. This can be requested directly or via a detailed medical form. There are no details for the grounds on which this wheelchair assistance might be withheld.
When contacted for comment the airline said it was investigating the incident.
A spokesperson for Fiji Airways said that the safety of their guests was “paramount” and that “wheelchairs are certified for single person use only due to the fact that there is only one safety belt.”
“The question also arises of whether a guest with an injury requiring a wheelchair transfer is sufficiently able bodied to attend to the infant during an emergency.”
Ahd said she could not stand for the first day after arriving in Fiji and her father had to take care of her and her baby. It seemed illogical that the there could be no flexibility or additional help with her child, if they were originally willing to provide an agent to push her to the gate.
“The crew on the plane were the best crew I have ever come across. So, so helpful and kept checking on me and [my daughter] the whole time,” she said, but the experience had ruined her daughter’s first flight and left her dreading the return trip.
She will be returning to Auckland on Air New Zealand.
