Marissa Bode is calling out Southern Airways after she claims that she was denied boarding a flight because of her wheelchair, despite her manager checking with the company beforehand.
The Wicked actress, who played Nessarose on the big screen adaptations, took to TikTok on Thursday to share her frustrations, saying, “I was denied boarding a flight because I’m disabled. I wish that were clickbait. I wish that were false, but that is what happened.”
Bode explained that Southern Airways is “extremely, extremely small” and that she had to use the airline as her connecting flight due to limited options heading to her destination in a small Pennsylvania town.
While switching between flights, the actress said she was having trouble finding her virtual ticket before boarding the Southern Airways plane. Once she got to the gate, that’s when she asked two employees for assistance. However, they instead told her she wasn’t allowed to board due to being in a wheelchair.
“So I got to the gate, and I was like, ‘Hey, could you help me locate my boarding pass?’” Bode recounted of the interaction. “And the two people at the gate look at me, and they are like, ‘Can you stand?’ And I said, ‘No.’ And they said, ‘I’m sorry, but because of that, we’re going to have to deny you boarding.’ They proceeded to tell me all the planes within this airline have stairs to get on the plane. Wild. Never heard of that before.”
She continued, “Why are we once again waiting around for a disabled person to be present to even think about changing things or accommodating things. … And that’s exactly what I said to him. I was like, disabled people are not an afterthought. Why, knowing that disabled people exist, which y’all clearly often forget, do you choose not to update your planes? And I was like, ‘This is blatant segregation.’”
Bode even noted that her manager “literally called them, talked to them on the phone, asked [Southern Airways] if they could make that accommodation, and they fully assured [her manager], yes,” before booking the flight.
According to Southern Airlines’ current contract of carriage, “Customers must be able to ascend and descend several steps to board the aircraft. Our aircraft hold 28 or fewer passengers and therefore are not required under the Air Carrier Access Act (section 382.97) to provide mechanical lift devices for enplaning or deplaning.”
After Bode’s TikTok went viral, she shared in a follow-up video that the director of Southern Airways’s mobility department reached out to her over the incident.
“They called me,” she said. “The director was mortified. She was very apologetic, very understanding, which I really do appreciate. They are doing an internal look on things and how this happened, again because we did call ahead of time before booking, asking about the accommodation. They are also currently staying in contact with me in terms of how we can make it better in the future.”
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