I love Mumford and Sons and there is a line in Hopeless Wanderer that is perfect for this post: “I will learn to love these skies I’m under.”

This is a start of a quartet of posts about transportation in England and Ireland. This is the skies post. The next two posts will be related to accessible travel (planes, trains, boats, busses, WAVs and more) in England and the final post will be all Ireland and going home.

Flight from Minneapolis to London

It’s a nine-hour direct flight to London and I have long arms that tend to jerk around. See pictures of my parents, on either side of me, and you see why it felt like a twenty-hour flight. My mom even strapped my legs to hers to try to steady my legs from jerking up. I had scratches from getting my arms stuck between arm rests (not movable when in bulkhead seating because that’s where the tray and video monitor are). Welcome to flying with athetoid cerebral palsy with the extra added bonus of dystonia that comes with kernicterus, yay!!!

Preparing for flight

Flying with a wheelchair and travelling with my shower/toilet chair were some of the things we had to figure out. Many of you have probably heard or experienced the horror stories of broken wheelchairs and other damage to equipment when flying. We decided it would work best to use my manual wheelchair for the trip because I can’t risk my power chair being damaged and not available for me. Period. Both my power and manual wheelchairs have custom seating and just a regular wheelchair would never work for me and my movement.

I also need my Rifton HTS toilet/shower chair when traveling. It’s interesting, the pediatric sizes of my shower/toilet chair have a special travel base and bag that would be great for taking on the road, on a flight, or on a train. The adult size does NOT have any special travel bases or cases because apparently adults using this toilet/shower chair don’t travel???? The solution we came up with is pictured below. We broke down the toilet chair parts which fit in a super big suitcase which can be checked for free because it’s medical equipment. We also added other miscellaneous equipment into this suitcase which meant it was overweight (but is medical equipment so no charges for being too heavy). My dad wrapped the wheels of the base with bubble wrap and duct tape and tied down the adjustable height parts so it wouldn’t raise up or down or get broken. The bag and the base were both part of my checked luggage. The base fit over the top of the suitcase so the whole thing just rolled along with us when walking around.

I stay in my own wheelchair until I get to the door of the plane. My dad took all the removable pieces off my wheelchair (arm rests, straps, seat, etc.) right after carrying me to my seat on the plane. We found a double stroller bag that fit all the removable pieces of my chair that could easily be damaged in flight. Once we landed, my dad waited for the chair to be brought back to the door of the plane and got it all put back together again. This worked pretty well for us this time and there was no damage to the chair.

Getting on and off the planes

I wheel to the door of the plane and can board about 5 minutes before everyone else. My dad carried me under my arms and my mom carried my legs down the unbelievably skinny aisles (seriously had to flip me on my side to get through an incredibly skinny portion). Wish we had a picture or video of this production. I had been bumped up to the bulkhead seating in Comfort+ as an accommodation which was Row 30 on the flight from Minneapolis to London. A long way to carry a 6’4” tall me with super long arms getting bashed into the seats and divider walls in the plane. In case you’re wondering, The aisle chairs provided by the airlines do NOT work for me – I have too much movement and need more support than they provide. That’s why my parents carry me to my seat.

Once I got to my seat, mom worked on wrapping a lovely blue strap with super strong Velcro around my chest for extra trunk support that I need as I am unable to sit on my own for long durations (greater than five minutes). Took a half hour to get the chair in London because they had it up at the gate and not down at the door and there seemed to be a “to-do” about getting it from point A to point me. But that is a story for another time. We are usually the first people on, last people off because of these reasons. Maybe someday we can just have tie downs on a plane and stay in our own wheelchairs when flying!

If you’re wondering how exactly I went to the bathroom during this super long flight – because yes, people using wheelchairs and flying also go to the bathroom. They did have a way to expand the bathroom on the flight to accommodate someone using the aisle chair. That obviously wouldn’t have worked for me. For this flight, I used an external catheter and was able to go right in my seat. It was dark, so no big deal. My dad was able to walk back and empty the bag in the bathroom. These are real things to think about – sorry if you don’t care or never thought about going to the bathroom.

Shout out to the awesome flight attendants on our flight. They were helpful, attentive, went out of their way to make sure I was taken care of.