The ice man

Airline services now use forklift trucks to load passengers

August 11, 2008 on 9:46 pm | By admin | In Autos & Trucks :: Trucks

The remaining airlines of today are becoming increasingly concerned with facilitating travel arrangements for their handicapped patrons. For example, Pan American Airways assists wheelchair traveler into its planes by means of a forklift truck when necessary. The chair rolls onto a pallet; then the truck slips its prongs under the pallet and lifts chair and rider to the door of the plane. He rolls off the pallet, down the aisle, to his seat.

United Air Lines uses another method to assist the traveler who must use crutches or who has a serious illness that doesn't allow him to climb steps, He sits in a "Stepulator," an electrically powered step-climber, at the bottom of the gang plank. A button is pressed, and he rides in comfort to the top of die steps where his crutches await him and goes to his seat under his own power.