Disabled Passenger Forced to Crawl Off United Flight

A disabled man says he was forced to crawl off a United Airlines flight after airline workers didn't bring him a wheelchair.

D'Arcee Neal told WRC-TV that he waited for a wheelchair that would fit through the aisle to help him get off the empty plane after it landed in Washington D.C. on Tuesday - but help never came. He needed to use the restroom, so he was forced to crawl halfway across the jet where his usual wheelchair awaited.

"I mean, it's humiliating," he told WRC-TV. "No one should have to do what I did."

Neal, who has Cerebral Palsy, was returning from San Francisco where he was a guest speaker on disability-accessible transportation.

United Airlines said it regrets the delay in providing an aisle chair to assist Neal.

The National Disability Rights Network said that in 2014 here were over 27,500 complaints from people with disability about airline service. The Air Carrier Access Act guarantees consistent service to passengers with disabilities, but complaints are up 9 percent in the past year, said the group.

In June, a woman in a wheelchair filed a lawsuit against American Airlines after she says she was forced to crawl onto a plane. Theresa Purcell, who has a neurological disorder known as Charcot-Marie-Tooth's disease that keeps her in a wheelchair, claims she forced to get out her wheelchair and crawl up all the way to her seat, without any assistance from the airline.