Delta sends off Paralympians to Paris

Delta Air Lines is flying Team USA athletes to Paris this week ahead of the Paralympic Games, and deploying specially-trained staff to help with handling of athletes’ specialized gear.

As the official airline of Team USA , Atlanta-based Delta also flew competitors to the Olympics in Paris last month.

On Tuesday, Delta held a send-off for a flight from Atlanta to Paris carrying more than two dozen Paralympians, including the entire wheelchair rugby team. The Games start Aug. 28.

Credit: Ben Gray

It’s one of a number of Delta flights from airports across the country with Paralympians aboard, on their way to the Games. The athletes are heading to Paris days before the competitions start, so they have time to register, get acclimated and get in some training.

At the Paralympics, “there’s a lot of really exciting sport that happens that people have never seen before,” said Paralympian Jeff Butler before boarding the flight “Everyone knows the Olympics, right? Very few people know and are exposed to the Paralympics.”

Chuck Aoki, now a four-time Paralympian in wheelchair rugby, called his sport one “unlike any you’ve ever seen, in terms of the crashing, the smashing.”

“It’s really just dynamic, it’s exciting, it’s fast,” Aoki said. And, “I think we’ve got the team that can go win a gold medal.”

Credit: Ben Gray

For Sarah Adam, the trip to Paris is her first to compete in The Games, and she’s the first woman to represent Team USA at the Paralympics in wheelchair rugby, which is a coed sport. Adam started playing the sport in 2019.

Adam was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis while she was graduating college, went to graduate school for occupational therapy and is now a professor at St. Louis University in occupational therapy.

As the only female on the Team USA wheelchair rugby team, “Somebody’s got to keep the guys in line, you know?” Adam said while waiting in the gate area for her flight to Paris.

When Grace Bentley arrived at her gate for a flight to Paris for vacation, the Paralympic athletes were waiting to board and Delta had a Team USA-themed station set up for photos and free snacks. “I immediately texted my boyfriend, and I was like, ‘Oh my goodness, the Team USA for the Paralympics are on our flight. How cool is that?’” Bentley said.

Credit: Ben Gray for the AJC

Along with flying Team USA athletes to Paris, Delta is also sending employees trained in handling wheelchairs to help handle the dozens of chairs arriving on flights for the Paralympics, including specialized competition chairs.

“We’ve dispatched some of our experts from around the U.S.,” said Jaclyn Koleck, general manager of airport strategy at Delta. She said those workers are the same employees Delta dispatches to a gate when the airline knows in advance that there’s a customer traveling with their personal wheelchair.

Aoki, who is sponsored by Delta as one of the company’s ambassadors, said “it’s a very real concern that, you know, too many wheelchairs get broken every day.”

He lives in Michigan but is from Minneapolis, where Delta has a hub, “so they’re a company I’ve been flying for a very, very long time,” he said.

Aoki said Delta “has really been mindful” of listening to Paralympic athletes and considering how to handle their equipment and avoid damage.

Delta’s efforts come against a backdrop in which airlines have at times been criticized for their handling of wheelchairs for years.

The problems have drawn attention of the federal government, with U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg announcing in February proposed regulations to require training of airline employees who assist passengers with disabilities and handle wheelchairs, and to hold airlines accountable for mishandling wheelchairs.

Hundreds of wheelchairs and scooters are mishandled every month. Among airlines ranked in the U.S. Air Travel Consumer Report, Delta had the lowest rate of mishandled wheelchairs and scooters in the most recently reported federal data, for May. Of nearly 15,000 wheelchairs and scooters put on its planes in May, Delta mishandled 0.61%, which was about half the rate of 1.24% for airlines overall.

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