At the end of last week, United Airlines announced a new collaboration with United Spinal Association focused on improving the travel experience for customers with disabilities. The announcement comes after the success of the airline’s digital tool helping passengers match wheelchair dimensions with aircraft size.

United Spinal Association empowers wheelchair users in the United States and is dedicated to “creating change and connecting wheelchair users to support networks.” One of the association’s core pillars is making tomorrow’s world accessible for all wheelchair users and the collaboration with United is expected to advance this mission in air travel.

The collaboration will shape the airline’s continued innovation around accessibility and David Kinzelman, Chief Customer Officer at United explained the airline will be working together with United Spinal to:

“Explore even more impactful solutions in the future; collaborating with their community of experts and harnessing their valuable feedback will help us better meet the specific needs of our customers who use wheelchairs.”

United also reported a positive reception to its “industry-first” digital sizing tool first launched in March, which has already contributed to a significant improvement in customer satisfaction scores. Explaining the new feature, the United website detailed:

The new flight filter will enable customers to enter the dimensions of their personal wheelchair as part of the flight search. The search results will prioritize flight options on aircraft with cargo hold doors large enough to accommodate the wheelchair dimensions. The size of aircraft cargo hold doors varies, so some aircraft are better able than others to handle larger motorized wheelchairs, which must travel upright.

Other initiatives the airline has introduced include empowering ramp agents with mobile technology, adding Braille to aircraft interiors, select features on the mobile app, accessibility focused IFEC, and more.

 

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