Air Travel with Crutches

Zelda is pumped to be out of the kitty jail that we sent her to while we were away.

We went on a vacation last week, a vacation that had been planned long before I broke my ankle (actually, technically, I broke both my leg bones near my ankle, but it just makes more sense to people to say ankle because a joint makes more sense when you're talking about my insanely long recovery time).  Part of this vacation involved air travel and as much as I scoured the interwebs looking for information on traveling with crutches, I found very little.  Consider this my public service announcement.

We flew from Minneapolis to Orlando with a layover in Charlotte and flew direct from Orlando to Minneapolis on the return trip.  Here's what went down.

Security:  I annoyed the TSA agents by being very insistent that I needed my crutches to walk.  I also refused to take off the shoe on my good foot because, ummm, my balance just isn't that good.   At Minneapolis, they allowed me to use my crutches to get into the full body scanner, then they took my crutches (I can stand without them at this point) to scan me, then they let me sit down as they ran the crutches through the xray and swiped my boot and shoe for explosive residue.  It took maybe three or four minutes longer than my husband did sans crutches.

In Orlando, things were different.  After I insisted that I couldn't use their TSA approved cane, but that I needed my crutches, the TSA agent rolled her eyes and rerouted me around the xray and then they had me stand while my crutches when through the xray machine.  At this point, the TSA agent told me to step onto a mat about five feet away for my pat down. I stared at her like a crazy person and reminded her, not so gently, that she had just taken my crutches away.  She did an extremely thorough pat down on me right where I stood. My crutches were returned to me and I was shuffled into a little room with an xray machine that's sole purpose was to xray casts.  It took maybe five to eight minutes longer than my husband did for me to go through security.

I will say that it would have been extremely difficult to do this without my husband.  While I was getting shunted off for pat downs and full body scans, he was keeping track of my carryon luggage and other personal belongings. If I had been by myself, I'm pretty sure I would have had to be much more of an advocate about keeping my eyes on my stuff.  As it was, I had to really stick to my guns about using my crutches.  I might have, even probably could have, used their cane.  But I might have fallen on my face, too, and it seemed like that might have slowed security more than me standing upright with my crutches.

Airports: In Minneapolis, our gate was close to the entrance, so I just walked it.  We left Minneapolis about 35-40 minutes later than we had anticipated, so our layover in Charlotte was much shorter than we had anticipated. We managed to get one of those fun electric carts to get us to our gate on time.  On the return trip was also used an electric cart to get from our gate to the exit because we were really far away. Overall, I think the airlines do a good job in the airports of accommodations.

Airplanes:  We were allowed to preboard on all of our flights. As a matter of fact, in Charlotte, we came in just as regular boarding had started and some wonderful man let us cut to the front of the line.  Normally I'm the last person to board a plane because who wants to be on the plane for a longer time, but I was grateful for the preboarding. We were also the last ones off the plane.  I was able to put my crutches in the overhead compartments during the flights.  If I had to use the bathroom, I'm am not entirely sure what I would have done.

Overall, it wasn't horrible.  The airlines do have a pretty streamlined system at this point.