70,000-euro fine urged in easyJet disabled passenger case

Public prosecutors today called for British budget airline easyJet to be fined 70,000 euros (USD 96,000) for having forced a disabled woman off a flight.
In one of two cases before French courts this week involving claims against easyJet from wheelchair users, state attorney Denys Millet called on a Paris appeals court to increase a fine imposed on the company last year.
The company was fined 5,000 euros and ordered to pay another 5,000 euros in damages in May 2012 in a case brought by wheelchair-bound Marie-Patricia Hoarau.
The British company appealed the verdict, saying it was in compliance with British law when it forced her to disembark for security reasons.

Despite having flown alone the previous day, Hoarau was ordered taken off a flight from Paris to the French Riviera city of Nice in March 2010.
Cabin crew told Hoarau, 39, she could not travel unaccompanied because she could not reach an emergency exit on her own.

She was ordered off the plane despite a pilot travelling on the same flight agreeing to assist her.
Hoarau later took another flight, saying she felt "humiliated and rejected", and decided to take easyJet to court after contacting France's APF association for the disabled.
Millet told the court the company's move was a "travesty" and that the requirement for wheelchair users to be accompanied "does not fit with the idea of security needs".

A ruling in the case is expected on February 11.
The second case, to be heard on Thursday in the Paris suburb of Bobigny, involves another wheelchair user who was refused onto a flight from Paris because she was travelling alone.
She was forced to buy a last-minute return ticket with another company to get to her son's funeral in Portugal.
This is not the first time that easyJet has been taken to court over allegations of discrimination against the disabled.
In January last year, a French court fined the airline 70,000 euros for refusing to allow three wheelchair users to board its planes between November 2008 and January 2009, in what a lawyer for the plaintiffs said was a "landmark ruling".