MELBOURNE – A group of deaf people from Melbourne has launched a discrimination case against Singapore-based Tiger Airways after the budget carrier insisted they travel with a carer last month.
But AAP reports that Australia’s federal disability discrimination commissioner Graeme Innes says the problem isn’t limited to Tiger.
“There have been endemic problems in airlines over the past few years where people with disabilities have been refused carriage because of their disability,†Innes told Sky News.
“The introduction of low cost airlines has been one of the reasons.”
Innes said they often applied unnecessarily strenuous or zealous interpretations of airline safety regulations and their staff weren’t trained well enough.
“What you get sometimes are individual decisions which are outside airline policies,” he said.
In 2006, Virgin Blue was forced to back down over its policy requiring wheelchair-bound passengers to be accompanied by a carer. It was currently fighting a federal court case over alleged discrimination, Innes said.
Government secretary for disabilities services, Bill Shorten, said the government was concerned that discrimination was taking place “in the name of safety”.
“People who are deaf can still see and all emergency safety briefings have pictorial representations,” he said.
“Just because people are deaf doesn’t mean that they’re stupid.”
He said Qantas had the best policy: “If you can’t self-medicate and self-see then you need a carer”.
