Melissa Higgins took her family on a three-day trip to Disneyland Paris on funded by Make A Wish Foundation with her 14-year-old son Anthony Higgins on August 27
A schoolboy was left in tears after easyJet staff allegedly forced him to abandon his wheelchair battery or risk not being flown home from Disneyland.
Melissa Higgins took her family on a three-day trip to Disneyland Paris, a journey funded by the Make-A-Wish Foundation, with her 14-year-old son, Anthony (AJ) Higgins, on 27 August.
Anthony suffers from Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a progressive genetic disorder that causes muscle weakness and leaves him unable to walk. Melissa says his £10,000 power-assisted wheelchair is his ‘life’ as it provides him with independence.
The mother-of-four claims a pilot refused to allow the wheelchair battery onto the return flight from Paris Charles de Gaulle to Manchester airport on 29 August because the wattage wasn’t visible.
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The full-time carer insists she’s never encountered problems before, including on their outbound flight with easyJet, and maintains she had paperwork stating it was safe to fly – but was compelled to leave it in Paris.
Without his wheelchair, the teenager is now ‘stuck’ inside his house and unable to go to school, the family has claimed.
Melissa, 37, is still hopeful that the £1,000 battery will be returned to them and she has since received an apology over the phone from the airline.
The mum, from Speke, Liverpool, said: “I was in shock on the plane and thinking, ‘What’s going on?’. We’ve not had this problem before. I don’t get why all the commotion’s gone on for nothing. It was a lifelong dream of AJ’s to go to Disneyland. He was able to fly to Disneyland with no problems.”
Melissa explained how, on the way home, a pilot spotted the battery and told the family they couldn’t travel with it.
“It went through customs perfectly fine. If there was something wrong with it they would’ve known. He was like, ‘It hasn’t got a wattage on it’ but these batteries don’t have a wattage on them because they’re dry and not liquid,” Melissa said of the pilot.
“We were there for about an hour and a half and he was trying to get this wattage for the battery, but I explained ‘it doesn’t have a wattage, we have all the paperwork from the manufacturers’. He said it puts the other travellers at risk.”
She added: “Doing this in front of everyone was humiliating and everyone on the plane was moaning. We were all crying. In the end we just wanted to get the kids home so we had to leave the battery behind and had to come home without it. Obviously we wanted to bring the chair back with us because it’s his life.”
The mum says her son has lost all of his independence without his wheelchair and is hoping to be reunited with the battery to avoid having to fork out £1,000 for a new one.
An easyJet spokesman said: “Safety is easyJet’s highest priority and airlines must follow the safety regulations for the carriage of batteries, which are allowed to travel on the aircraft as long as the required information for safe carriage can be provided, and we advise customers of these requirements ahead of travel.
“Unfortunately, as the necessary information could not be provided for this battery, in line with safety procedures, it was unable to travel. However we fully understand the frustration this will have caused and are in contact with the family to offer further assistance and have arranged to return the battery to them today.”