[abutterfinger25]

You make a good point there JR and I will give you the morality point on prostitution. But not the others. I'll leave the whole hemp discussion for another thread.

The ADA and ACAA are not morality driven laws, in such that they were not drafted and written to provide a helping hand to those with impairments. They were drafted to give those people equal access to those without impairments. They are eqality laws just like anti-discrimination laws. My morality analogy was directed towards those who know the existing laws and use them to their own advantage knowing that they are not entitled to those protections.

I think these are the people that "got your goat" and you are so adamently against. And I agree with you, these people should not get any benefits from the regulations and carriers should not have to shell out money to provide those services. However, your solution would deprive those people that the ACAA was designed to protect in order to prevent those (for lack of a better term) scumballs from milking the system.

The only people that truly know the level of assistance need is the passenger himself. By putting the decision in the hands of the carrier, you run the risk of a passenger who truly needs assistance, but his appearance says otherwise, is denied assistance by an agent based solely on the perception that the passenger does not need any help or even an attendant who is just lazy and does not want to do his/her job. (I am sure Jim would agree that there are such carrier personnel out there). So in short, you are going to have the same problems that exist now, but flipped. I hope you would agree that it is better to provide assistance to someone who does not need it, than to deny assistance to one who does.

[Putting back on the DOT hat for a second]

In Jim's example, a carrier would be within its right to say that the passenger can not complete his trip safely and would need to travel with attendant. (thus the whole attendant rule I alluded to earlier).

Now we would hope that the carrier would make the suggestion that Sabena did, and we would make that suggestion if we got involved before the travel dates.

Note: I am only refering to flights operated to, from or between 2 US airports. I do not want to comment on any other nations laws on this subject.

[Taking off the DOT hat for continued discussion]