I haven’t flown since airport handlers broke my wheelchair power pack on a journey between Tenerife and Luton just before the Covid-19 pandemic broke out.

After clocking the damage, I, along with my mum, had to spend an hour filling out forms to make sure the airline couldn’t claim that I’d broken the pack myself. We then endured a gruelling trip back to London with me being on my broken wheelchair.

In the two weeks it took to get my pack fixed, my family and carers had to wheel me around using muscle power alone, which was very difficult. As for getting on and off buses without my pack, that was nigh on impossible.

The airline was apologetic and paid the £200 bill for the repair, but the incident and its aftermath left a mark on me and I have neither flown nor left the country since then.

I miss flying because as a wheelchair user it is the easiest way for me to get to some of the places I enjoy the most like Tenerife, which is an accessible destination.

Not that air travel was ever easy for wheelchair users like myself.

At the boarding gate or in the jet tunnel we have to transfer into mobile aisle-chairs, which are ultra narrow wheelchairs, and get pushed into the plane. Once we’ve maneuvered ourselves (or been maneuvered) into our seat we cannot move again unless we call for staff to come to our aid with the aisle-chairs.

Personally, I always avoided going to the toilet during flights because of the amount of work and hassle involved. I am not alone and have heard of other wheelchair users starving and dehydrating themselves to avoid having to use the toilet on flights.

All that was challenging enough as it was, but when one crew member said after one flight that I was getting ‘too big to fit into an aisle-chair’, I felt both offended and worried at the same time.

‘What if they refuse to transfer me into the aisle-chair next time?’ I thought.

‘Would they end-up carrying me into the plane?’

But most of all, it just felt horrible to be spoken about like that.

After that comment, flying began to feel like it might be too much of an ordeal to be worth it – and so when my wheelchair got broken that was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

I know I am not the only wheelchair user who struggles with flights and feels discriminated against by airlines and airport staff. Journalist and Broadcaster Mik Scarlett, who also uses a wheelchair, has also stopped flying.

Mik said: “The last time I flew the cabin crew dropped me and broke my leg in half. So I haven’t flown since, and that was 2016. But that’s just the most recent disaster…”

He added: “No I sing the praises of the Eurostar. That’s how we travel to Europe these days.”

TV presenter and writer Sophie Morgan has launched a campaign called Rights on Flights to tackle discrimination, accessibility and safety issues affecting disabled air travellers.

In an episode of Loose Women, Sophie explained that a long-term goal of the campaign was to get aircraft re-designed so wheelchair users could park their chairs directly in the aircraft without having to transfer into a seat, as is already the case in trains. The aircraft would also have wheelchair accessible toilets.

“But that’s going to take some time,” she says, adding: “so the short-term goal is to ask the Government to give the Civil Aviation Authority the power to impose fines when an airline or any of the other parties involved fail disabled people.”

“So, say they leave us on board an aircraft for too long or if your wheelchair gets damaged or your equipment gets damaged like mine did or if the assistants just don’t turn up or isn’t appropriate, there are consequences,” she further said.

In this TED talk, Sophie gives powerful examples of how badly wheelchair users are treated on flights and how we need a social model approach to solve it.

I don’t know how long it will take to change attitudes and aircraft so that wheelchair users can enjoy flying in the same way as others can, but I know they need to make things better.

In the meantime, I’ll make do with trips to Devon and Blackpool – at least I’m reducing my carbon footprint and saving some money.