Frequent commenter Barry Deutsch provides some useful counterweight (as usual) to an Ethics Alarms post, this one regarding fake handicapped flyers in airports. Here is his Comment of the Day, on the recent post, “Miracle Flights”: More Air Travel Cheating”:

“Eh. I’m sure some people do cheat – but I’m also sure that some people who the article implies are cheaters, aren’t doing anything of the sort.

“I’m not usually bothered by the five-minute walk from when I get out of security to my gate in the Portland airport. But standing on the security line is much harder. First of all, it can easily take up to 20 minutes if the airport is crowded, so I’m standing for much longer. And even if it’s only five minutes, standing still (with occasional shuffling) is just much, much harder on me than walking is. My bad knee and heel, normally slight nuisances that I ignore while walking, sometimes scream with pain waiting on line.

“In 20 years time, if my body keeps on degrading, I could easily imagine myself requesting a wheelchair for the security line, but standing up and walking once I’m past it – not because I’ll be cheating, but because I’ll genuinely be incapable of standing on a security line for 20 minutes without unreasonable pain and misery (or not at all), but nonetheless capable of walking for five minutes to my gate.

“Similarly, according to the article it sometimes happens that someone seated near the front of the plane will use a wheelchair to board the plane, but walk off the plane without a chair. But boarding an airplane is simply harder work than deboarding, if you’re sitting near the front! When you board the plane, everyone lines up in single file and shuffles, shuffles, shuffles at an extremely slow speed along the jetway. It normally takes five to ten minutes, and if several passengers are slowed down by hard- to-stow baggage it can take even longer.

“In contrast, if you’re near the front of the plane, deboarding requires a one-minute walk down the jetway to the airport – a trip which requires far less leg strength and endurance. There’s no reason to assume that someone who is capable of deboarding by themselves, is capable of boarding by themselves just as easily.

“Don’t get me wrong – I’m sure that some people do cheat (although judging from the article, those people are probably a very small percentage of all passengers). But I’m also sure that some of those able-bodied airport workers who are so sure that people who sometimes use a chair and sometimes walk are cheaters, are just being ignorant and judgmental.”