The Necessity and Feasibility of Personal Wheelchairs on Commercial Aircrafts

Background and/or Objectives: For the 80 million passengers worldwide who utilize wheelchairs to meet mobility and life-sustaining medical needs, air travel presents numerous risks. Many of these risks could be mitigated with wheelchair tie-downs and occupant restraint systems (WTORS) for aircraft. This study explores the medical and personal necessity of allowing personal wheelchairs on commercial aircraft and addresses safety and feasibility by presenting crash test outcomes in simulated emergent landing conditions.

Design: To assess whether WTORS can withstand Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) specific emergent landing conditions and provide safety equivalent to traditional seating, this experimental study conducted 14g downward and 16g forward dynamic crash tests.

Setting : Technical/Crash Test at Advanced Virtual Engineering and Testing Laboratories at The National Institute for Aviation Research.

Participants : No human participants. A Hybrid III anthropomorphic testing device represented an occupant seated in a wheelchair.

Interventions: Intervention utilized an anthropomorphic testing device and securement compliant WTORS to conduct dynamic crash testing with an Instron Hydropuls CSA advanced servo-hydraulic simulator.

Main Outcome Measures: Wheelchairs secured with compliant WTORS safely withstood FAA dynamic testing, supporting the technical feasibility and safe utilization of personal wheelchairs on commercial aircraft.

Results: Compliant WTORS and wheelchair systems consistently withstood the dynamic test requirements of emergency landing conditions for transport category aircraft. Wheelchairs remained securely attached to WTORS without structural failure, demonstrating neither item was likely to become a loose mass or pose a hazard within the aircraft cabin environment.

Conclusions: These findings support policy changes permitting wheelchairs on commercial aircrafts and improving the safety, well-being and accessibility of traveling by air for tens of millions of people with disabilities around the world. Armed with this knowledge, physiatrists should be willing and able to advocate on an individual, local, and national level for the rights of their patients to have accessible, safe air transportation.