Oy. What a horrible ordeal that must have been. I worked at Ohare for an airline as a special services runner right out of college. I boarded, met planes for unaccompanied children and people with every disability imaginable and a few VIPs for good measure with all sorts of attitudes from amazing to evil. But the more severe the disability generally the nicer they were. Those with more minor challenges seemed to enjoy harassing the heck out of us and demanded the world.
Ticked me off when wheelchairs didn't come right up 'cause I needed them off first or had to wait until everyone else was off. Worse to find out they never loaded the wheelchairs at departing city and I was the one who had to tell the passenger it would be on the next flight, tomorrow.
It happened with strollers too and those peeps seemed to be angrier but while I empathized so much more fixable. The only issue I hated more than a missing or broken wheelchair was when a departing city forgot to load an unaccompanied child and failed to notify us. Nothing like having parents meeting the plane and no kid, thankfully that didn't happen to often and they were never misplaced just mishandled.
I couldn't do this much more than a few years and left the airlines and dealt with cargo, simpler. That is why I have so much empathy for front line CMs with DAS. Pretty powerless to fix much.
