Inter-railing? With a Wheelchair? You Have to be Crazy. Part One

The Three Ps - Prepare Prepare Prepare!

When I finished university, like so many young adults, lots of my friends decided to go travelling.  Not immediately, first of all they needed to save some money so they found jobs with a purpose - to get some cash.  What did I do?  I went straight to work, to a proper job.  One that my university degree had prepared me for.  I did not pass go and I did not collect $200.

I had no great plans to travel and see the world.  My family migrated to Australia from the UK during my first year at uni, so I had been flying back and forth for Christmas for 4 years.  My older sister, followed six months later by my beloved grandfather, died during my second year at university.  I got my degree by the skin of my teeth, I was grieving terribly and had some weird medical stuff going on. Thoughts of planning anything other than which Marks and Spencer’s sandwich I got with my luncheon vouchers was out of my league.

Towards the end of my second year as a marketing executive with a major international news magazine, I had to renew my passport in preparation for my annual trip to Sydney.  I got a big surprise when the Passport Office told me if I didn’t “establish my residency” in Australia for at least a year, my permanent residency status would be revoked.  I figured that even if I didn’t want to migrate to Australia (I really didn’t) it would be a good idea to keep hold of something I had been given, that hundreds of people wanted.  So with promises by my then boyfriend that he would join me for a year at which point we’d return and get married, 23 year old me resigned from my job and flew off for my usual Christmas trip - with a bit of an extension.  It’s not a plot spoiler to say that when push came to shove, my boyfriend chickened out.  Seriously?  Who backs out on a year in Australia with accommodation thrown in?  Apparently he does (can you hear the eye roll?).

By now my friends had saved enough money from their jobs to organise their round the world trips.  During my first two years in Australia, I had at least four sets of friends come and crash in my apartment for months at a time.  Sometimes two groups of friends arrived simultaneously which was a bit of a squish in my two bedroomed flat but I loved it.  This revolving door of friends, whilst I was trying to find my feet in Australia, helped me acclimatise to a new country, new city, new culture and yes a new language.  Australian English is definitely a different language from British English, as I discovered on many occasions.

Somehow, I never organised a return flight, despite my determination that I was only going to stay for a year.  Thirty five years later, here I am.  I medically retired in 2023, because that weird medical stuff I had going on in my teens and early twenties, ended up being Multiple Sclerosis and Psoriatic Arthritis (if you want to know more, you can find my first solo book, Bugger, Bugger Shit: my quest for resilience on Amazon, Kindle or in bookshops).

The day after I retired, I got on a plane for a four-week holiday to the UK.  The following year I got on a plane for a ten-week trip to the UK and Europe and last week I returned from a three-month trip to the UK and Europe - can you see a pattern evolving?  Once I retired, I decided now was the time to catch up with all that adventuring my friends had done in their early twenties.  Plot twist, by now I was in my mid to late 50s, using a wheelchair and those two incurable and degenerative diseases had definitely degenerated.

My trip in 2024 was a bit of a test for my bigger plan - inter-railing!  I flew into the UK, spent some time with family and friends, then took the Eurostar from London to Brussels.  I stayed in an Air B&B in Ghent for a couple of nights, then took the overnight train from Brussels to Munich where I stayed for a week with one of my long standing childhood friends.  I then hopped on a plane to Copenhagen to stay with my teenage exchange student friend who I hadn’t seen since I was fourteen!  Following a long weekend in Copenhagen, I hopped on another plane back to the UK for another month before returning to Sydney. More of that trip in a later post.

The big question I had on that trip was - could I manage it by myself and if the answer was yes, could I do a longer trip by myself in the future or would I need a companion/carer.  The quick answer? I would need a companion (or Sherpa) for a longer trip.

So the first of the subtitle Ps is - organise yourself a companion and do it well in advance!  I returned from that first trip in October 2024 and basically spent the next eighteen months planning and preparing.

In 2024 the Summer Paris Paralympics were in full swing whilst I was in Europe.  Some friends went but even though it was just across the Channel, I was too fatigued from my adventures in Belgium, Germany and Denmark to join them.  When I discovered that the 2026 Winter Paralympics were to be held in Milan and the Italian Alps, that became my goal and the planning commenced.

I chose my companion, who was only too keen to have a working holiday in Europe.  We agreed that I would pay him on “travel” days and on all the other days he would generally be with me to help out but given the basically free holiday etc, he wouldn’t be paid.  My planning involved my companion every step of the way and given I was reasonably flexible with the places I wanted to go, I was happy for him to contribute ideas. With that in mind, I planned the specifics of the trip, booked accomodation and tickets etc.  This is something anyone considering doing something like this MUST do in advance.  Even if you’re travelling with a friend or relative, given the complexities of travelling with a disability, it’s important to have this agreed on in advance, to avoid any potential miscommunication or conflicts.  My companion and I had a couple of minor snappy moments but given we were in each other’s space for three months, that’s not bad in my book.

Second P - planning the flights.

This is a biggie and it’s going to become even more complex as you’ll discover as you read on.  

In 2024 I flew Etihad via Abu Dhabi.  I won’t fly with them again.  I’m not saying you should or shouldn’t, that’s totally up to you, but I will briefly tell you what happened so that you are fully aware of my experience.  They lost my wheelchair in Abu Dhabi and broke a wheel. Which is pretty bad at any time but when you’ve just flown for fourteen hours and it’s 5am you do not want to be stuck in an airport and pushed around the airport for three hours in a manual chair by a grumpy wheelchair assistance employee whilst you’re told to go to every single department in the airport.  

Having flown back and forth between London and Sydney many times, I have decided that at my age I am not doing it without a stopover.  Flying with one of the Middle Eastern Airlines means you can access ridiculously cheap, five star hotel stopover deals, which I had taken advantage of on this trip.  Once they found my chair I got in a wheelchair taxi (very easy to find at the airport) which took me to my hotel where I had a very lovely breakfast, an excellent nap, an afternoon in a day spa, dinner, another nap and then off to the airport for my next flight which left in the middle of the night.

Given my previous experience with Etihad, this time I flew Qatar Airlines which was a whole other experience.  

When flying anywhere, but particularly internationally, you must contact the airline well in advance.  I started the task 3 months before my flight.  No, I’m not joking, be prepared.  

You will call the main contact centre who will then respond as if you are an alien asking them to personally fly your UFO.  It doesn’t matter if you’re flying from Sydney to Melbourne or Sydney to London and it doesn’t matter what airline you’re flying with.  I have flown a tonne of times and it happens every single time, without fail.

Be prepared with your wheelchair’s specifications from the manufacturer.  By the time the process is over, you will know it off by heart but you will still need it in writing, preferably photocopied straight from the instruction manual.  If your wheelchair is a manual chair, I imagine it is far more straight forward than flying with a power chair but I’m quite prepared to be corrected on that one.  

For those with manual chairs, please feel free to zip past the next few paragraphs, I have detailed the arduous process of having non-removable batteries approved.  For those with power chairs with batteries that are removable or with non-lithium batteries, the process may be less stringent, although given the increase in scrutiny of batteries, I highly doubt it.  

You will tell the people at the contact centre that you need to have approval from the airline’s dangerous goods team for the battery in your wheelchair.  You need to know this because the people at the contact centre do not know this.  Again, it doesn’t matter what airline you’re flying with, do not be lulled into a false sense of security by believing them when they tell you they know what to do.  Trust me on this one - they don’t.

Ask them what their email is so that you can email the specifications.  Do not lose said specifications, you will need to email it another half dozen times because:

• It got lost in the internet

• It went to the wrong department

• Their colleague didn’t pass it on

• You need to send it directly to the dangerous goods department

• You need to send it to the contact centre line supervisor who can elevate it to the manager of the dangerous goods team

• You need to email it to the god of flying

Ok I’ve never sent it to the god of flying but I have had to do the other five things on the list.  Stay patient, breathe, swear if you have to, but this is the way of the world if you happen to have a mobility related disability and you want to live your life to the full.  And as I said earlier, it’s about to get worse if you have lithium batteries.

A handy tool is the IATA Battery Powered Wheelchair and Mobility Guide which I email along with my wheelchair specs, to the dangerous goods team. I also wave it and my wheelchair spec sheet, in front of the noses of the staff at check-in (who, in my experience, are generally great but have no idea what they are doing either).  

Recently, there have been lots of whisperings and closed door conversations about the airlines changing their stance on lithium batteries.  I spoke to one of the Singapore Airline Check-In Supervisors last week who informed me that United Airlines have already banned lithium batteries and all airlines are heading towards requiring all power mobility aids to have Solid-state Lithium Batteries installed.  This concerns me considerably because, as far as I am aware, no company is producing them to scale and won’t be for some time.  What are wheelchair/scooter users supposed to do in the meantime if their wheelchairs use lithium batteries?  This is despite no known case of a lithium battery breaking an airplane even though there are literally thousands of cases of airlines breaking wheelchairs.  

I have more or less decided that next time I travel internationally (August 2027) I will borrow/hire a battery from the local distributor of my wheelchair and leave mine at home.  I haven’t yet worked out a solution to inter-state travel here in Australia if this comes in domestically.  The easy fix of course, is that airlines invest in fire-proof boxes for wheelchairs to be transported in rather than leaving the solution up to passengers.  I will certainly be loudly advocating for this.

Back to the airlines and the process of having wheelchairs approved to fly.  I submitted my documentation on numerous occasions to Qatar and still hadn’t received an actual approval from the dangerous goods department a week before my flight.  I did however receive confirmation of my assistance request, which you submit in the Manage Your Booking section of the website/app, so I took that as an approval of sorts.

Airlines generally require passengers on long-haul international flights to arrive three hours before boarding.  I always arrive four hours before.  This is because it can take up to an hour at check-in when you have a powered mobility device.  Typically what happens is I arrive, a staff member sees me (or I find one and ask where they want me) and accompanies me to the assistance check-in desk.  In my experience, this is often the Business or First Class check-in desk, this was the case with Qatar and it means you avoid having to queue for the general check-in.

Check-In takes an age because, despite having emailed all of your specs to the dangerous goods team, the systems for dangerous goods and the systems for check-in don’t actually speak to each other.  The check-in team have a form they need to complete including the dimensions, weight and battery situation.  This is why I now carry all the details, photocopied from my wheelchair manual, in a paper form.  It’s much easier and efficient to just hand it to them so they can copy it into the form.  They will then call the baggage handler supervisor to give them a heads up on the wheelchair.  On occasion they have called multiple departments.  I’m not entirely why and in my experience, whoever they’re calling usually tells them they are the wrong department, to call someone else and the saga continues.  More recently I’ve discovered the check-in supervisor is aware of a wheelchair passenger arriving and comes over immediately which makes the whole process more streamlined as they are on hand to assist the check-in staff fill in the paperwork.

On my recent trip with Singapore Airlines, the check-in supervisor called me as I was on my way to the airport to clarify how my wheelchair switches off and how I ensure the wheelchair can’t switch on mid-flight.  For me, I carry the on/off fob with me on board.  It has to be in the immediate vicinity of the wheelchair to switch it on and off.  I always offer to remove the little button battery from the fob to guarantee it but I’ve never been taken up on the offer.   At check-in this time, the supervisor took photos of my wheelchair to send to the baggage handlers so they knew exactly what it looks like.  He also asked me a question I have never been asked before - the UN number of the battery.  I had a momentary panic and rang the distributor in the UK to ask him but fortunately it was listed on the spec sheet.  The supervisor’s boss however asked him to take a photo of the battery with the UN number on it, which was impossible given its location and they let it pass but now that I’m home I’m going to take a more thorough look and see if I can get a photo of it, just in case.

Decide in advance if you want to use your own wheelchair to the gate/plane door and tick the relevant box in the manage your booking section.  If you have requested assistance (which you will have to do if you use a wheelchair) you can’t check-in online although, depending on the airline, you may be able to choose your seat on the plane.  When requesting assistance, there are a number of options depending on your level of mobility.  I am able to walk short distances so I usually choose, my wheelchair to the gate and wheelchair assistance to the plane door, although my mobility has improved of late so on recent trips I have ticked wheelchair to the gate. Don’t worry too much about this, you can always change your mind at the time.  I have always found the ground crew, whatever the airline, to be very supportive and amenable.

For those who are unable to walk, the airlines have what’s called an aisle chair.  These are extremely narrow, unsurprising, given their purpose.  Assistance staff will help you transfer from the wheelchair to the aisle chair and get you to your seat.  Flight crew will assist you during the flight into the aisle chair for the purposes of going to the toilet and will set up the toilet so that you have space and privacy but they will not help with toileting.  Airlines require passengers who need personal care of any type to bring a companion/carer with them on the flight. My hands don’t work well and sometimes I struggle to cut my food, flight crew won’t help with this type of need.  They have a job to do and providing extra assistance to passengers with disabilities, apart from the basics of getting to a toilet, is outside their remit.  By the way, at the time of writing, Qantas offer a 10% companion discount on local flights but not on international flights

Most large international airlines flying wide bodied jets, for example the A380s, have one accessible toilet on board.  By accessible, I mean the door is wide enough for the aisle chair and has a grab rail inside.  Some of the accessible toilets may have doors which cantilever open and join to the opposite toilet door to provide additional space.  If this is a particular concern, prior to purchasing your ticket, you should contact the airline customer service department to double check.  

Narrow bodied aircraft do not generally have accessible toilets, there simply isn’t the space.  Some of the more budget airlines may not even have aisle chairs.  These are all things you would be wise to check in advance of purchasing your ticket.  When you are searching for flights, you can click on the flight information which will tell you the type of aircraft.  For this trip, I opted for A380s for the long legs.  These were slightly more expensive than the 737 options but worth it.

Once you’ve checked in, the time is yours until boarding commences.  I tend to purchase a pass for one of the lounges, given how much spare time I have, and when you add up how much you would spend on food and drinks in the melee of departures, it’s worth it for a bit of free food, drinks and some peace and quiet.  I do it via the Smart Traveller app which accumulates points to use in the future.

My wheelchair has a travel case so I always arrive at the gate about 30 minutes prior to boarding to give me unstressed time to pack it into its travel case.  I make myself known to the staff at the gate desk who then radio down to the baggage handlers.  One or two of them come up to the gate and I clearly instruct them how to move my chair.  I also ask them to pass those instructions on to the baggage handlers at the other end.  My wheelchair has a name; Ruby.  Once all the instructions are discussed and I’ve supervised them moving the chair properly I tell them her name is Ruby and to look after her.  I know this sounds ridiculous but calling the chair by name seems to give her a personality and the baggage handlers respond differently and with more care.  I flew back to Sydney last week with Singapore Air. That story comes later, but what I will tell you is that the baggage handler at Heathrow came back up to see me at the gate once he had taken my chair down.  He showed me two photos of Ruby tied down in the box in the hold so I could be reassured she was ok.

My experience of Qatar Airlines was excellent in the end.  Ruby was waiting, undamaged at the gate for me in Doha.  Our baggage was booked through to London so we just had our cabin bags.  When I say cabin bags, let me clarify.  We each had a cabin bag and then we had a small suitcase which was filled entirely with three months worth of medication, my cpap machine and the ashes of my parents, which we planned to scatter in the UK, over my deceased sister’s grave.  If you ever have to do this, be warned, ashes are really, really heavy!  Qatar Airline’s policy is that if the ashes are in checked baggage, they count towards your baggage weight limit.  If they’re in cabin baggage they don’t.  Which explains why they came on board with us.  

The airlines are flexible when it comes to people with disabilities and mobility aids.  Mobility aids and medical devices are not counted towards your baggage weight limits.  I have never had my carry-on luggage questioned although I do keep it to a bag within the size limit for carry-on.  

Backing up a little to the pre-trip planning, I pre-booked all of the accommodation in advance which I will describe in coming posts relevant to each location.  Then to the inter-rail pass.  If you are outside of Europe, the passes are called Eurail passes.  If you’re within Europe and the UK, they are Inter-rail passes but apart from the purchasing process, the terms are used interchangeably.  I purchased my pass on their website, then contacted customer support here for the companion pass. Eurail provides free passes for carers.  I needed to provide a letter via email from my GP confirming my disability, that I use a wheelchair and require companion assistance. About half a second after submitting it, they issued me with my pass (three months) and three, one-month passes for my companion.  They only provide up to a maximum duration of one-month passes for companions (depending on the duration of the actual traveller purchase), I suppose it’s in case you swap companions during your trip. 

I hope this Part One of inter-railing with a wheelchair has been helpful.  Keep a look out for Part Two next week when I will fill you in on Doha and London.

If you have particular questions about this part of my adventure.  Please ask them below in the comments.  I will endeavour to answer them asap or I’ll let you know if I’ll be covering it in an upcoming piece.

As always, please forward on, you never know who might find it helpful.

Until next week, take care

Angharad