A woman traveling from San Francisco to Newark Liberty International in New Jersey on a JetBlue Airways flight last week took to Twitter after she said her wheelchair was left on the tarmac in the rain.
Yomi Wrong tweeted a picture of herself on April 6 from the airport saying, "Abandoned by @JetBlue in Newark at gate 38. They’ve lost my wheelchair and refuse to call a supervisor #DisabilityTwitter RT appreciated."
The tweet went viral, gaining over 60,000 retweets and over 125,000 likes. Wrong continued the thread of tweets with updates on her situation, eventually getting help from her sister to locate her wheelchair.
"My sister had to go find my chair after 3 @JetBlue employees lying for a whole ass hour that it was on the way," Wrong tweeted. "It was SITTING on the tarmac. In the rain. You can’t make this s**t up. I want a refund on my first class upgrade #DisabilityTwitter."
She claimed on Twitter that JetBlue said their elevators were not working and that is why they couldn't bring the wheelchair up to her.
"The height of ridic: a gaggle of @JetBlue employees having a b***h session about how trash their wheelchair notification system is and what a workflow buster it is to deal with … people like me. All this kvetching while my fam goes on a hunt for my chair #DisabilityTwitter," Wrong tweeted.
Despite the alleged elevator issues, the wheelchair was eventually found and returned to Wrong.
She later added that a piece of the wheelchair broke, and she was holding it in her lap while leaving the airport.
"P.S. @JetBlue broke my chair. I’m holding a piece of it in my lap on the drive into manhattan," Wrong said.
Wrong spoke to USA Today after the incident, and said that her "$30,00 custom power wheelchair" was damaged and will likely need repairs. Luckily, it is still working for the time being.
"A little bit over an hour later, here comes my sister," Wrong told USA Today. "She found an elevator and looked through an emergency door and saw my chair sitting on the tarmac in the rain. They had just left it there."
JetBlue issued a statement to USA Today regarding the issue and said, "while this customer's wheelchair was never lost, elevator issues led to the delay of its retrieval and for that we deeply apologize."
"We will continue to engage with our customer directly related to any potential damage to the device, as we want to ensure we resolve this issue," JetBlue said.
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