‘Human rights violation’: Airline forces wheelchair-bound man to crawl onto plane

An airline has been forced to apologise after it reportedly made a wheelchair user crawl up a set of stairs to board a plane.

Hideto Kijima, who is paralyzed from the waist down, wrote on his blog that he got out of the wheelchair and hoisted himself up the stairs with his arms.

Kijima faced the humiliating problem earlier this month while returning to Osaka from the southern island of Amami with a group friends.

Budget carrier, Vanilla Air, informed Kijima before boarding the aircraft on June 5 that the small airport requires the use of stairs and had no lift to safely carry a disabled person onto the plane.

Vanilla also refused to let his friends carry him in his wheelchair or separately.

Kijima, was left with little option to board the aircraft and against staff wishes proceeded to hoist himself up the long staircase.

The embarrassing process took several minutes.

"I just had to ignore them and keep moving up, or I could not go back to Osaka," he wrote.

One of his friends helped push him, and at the top he was put into a wheelchair and taken to his seat.

"I've never thought I would be refused to fly for not being able to walk," he said.

"It's a human rights violation."

Since the incident the airline has apologized and has said new lifts are being installed.

"We apologized to him for the unpleasant experience," Vanilla spokesman Akihiro Ishikawa said about the incident.

"We also explained that we are taking measures to improve our service."

Kijima, an advocate of barrier-free traveling, says he has visited 158 countries and used 200 airports, and has never been rejected before.

He says he is not asking for fancy equipment but just some assistance.

Ishikawa said Amami is the only airport on Vanilla's 14 international and domestic routes without lifts for wheelchair users.