Heathrow Airport recreates departure day 4x a year for young man with autism
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
The cynicism and essentially self centered criticism of this story is nothing short of stunning and deeply depressing. If this place were the commentards section for a US right wing radio station or the UK Daily Wail, then OK. Be here? The community that threw a thoroughly reasonable collective fit when a depressed IT hero commits suicide? All those decent human threads about depression and other mental illnesses? All that concern for Chinese and child workers making Apple and other products? And then I read this crap when a massive busy international airport does a really decent thing?
Ok, now i finally understand why our governments treat us like filth. If we cant applaud this sort of thing, we have zero right to refer to our selves as "humanity", we are just selfish nasty scum.
I don't care what this costs. I don't care if the evil communist BBC didn't write a book, but instead wrote a quick article. I don't care if it inconveniences some arsehole arrogant businessman. I see no relation to between this and our stupid racist security arrangements.
What I care about and respect is a simple act of human decency. This is one such act, and I applaud it.
If is that is too much for some "people", kill my karma, I dont give a fk.
This is not 'decent thing' but PR stunt. Similar way when cat on tree is rescued by three fire cars and police squad.
Just try to travel with someone who has serious mental condition and does not have 'connections'. Nothing makes flight smoother than saying 'I will kill you' to an officer.
Also the fact they travel from Heathrow (most overcrowded and busiest airport in Europe) and not from Gatwick, Stansted or other friendlier airport.
Am I the only one who (so far!) hasn't had any issues with Heathrow? Every single time I've been it's gone smoothly and on time. Last time I went through there wasn't even a queue at passport control(!)
I just thought it better to speak up because otherwise there's a bias with only people who have complaints commenting :)
Good on them for doing this for this kid though. Definitely not just a PR stunt if it's been going on for 5 years...
And even if they weren't, I'm not arguing with nor excusing anyone else's experiences, just providing a counterpoint that not all experiences with Heathrow have been bad.
I think you're just as bigoted as the people you are complaining about.
If you are a good, kind person, with respect for humans, then you are left-wing. And vice-versa. An obvisouly tautological argument, aimed at creating a "us versus them" confrontation that brings no benefit for the political debate.
If you can't imagine that a right-wing person can be kind, generous, good and wholeheartedly support human initiatives like this, then you have no idea what you are talking about when you talk about "right-wing", you are justing creating the enemy you want.
What about the 99% of kids with autism who's parents can't afford to send their kids overseas four times a year to a rich kids school.
Their kids get stuck in a shitty British school. Even worse it might not even be private!
Seems to me this school is in the 'not really proven' category, which would make me extra cautious it's not just a scam given the normal scams run against parents of autistic kids.
But all that's irrelevant, the parents can spend their money as the wish and assuming Heathrow is not tax payer funded they also may do as they wish.
But saying 'Ok, now i finally understand why our governments treat us like filth.' because people here on HN see through fluff stories is a bit much really.
I have a friend whose son is mildly autistic, and each new thing in his life has to be introduced in a specific way. For example, a new shirt will be brought into his room for several days for him to look at and touch. Once he's used to that he'll try it on, but he'll almost immediately take it off for the 'right' shirt that day. This can go on for several weeks, before he'll wear it in the house, but he still won't leave the house without putting on the 'right' shirt. He actually has a job, but it took almost six months from when he was hired until he would wear the full uniform for the job, because each piece of the uniform (and of course the job itself) had to be introduced in this fashion.
My friend's son is only considered 'mildly' autistic. I simply can't image going through a major airport the first time with someone like this. Once the pattern is established, yes, it's a challenge to keep it going ... but what about the first time?
1. You explain over a long period of time (weeks/months?) that you'll be travelling and what you'll be doing. The person is able to slowly come to terms with a change in routine before it happens. You set up a "new routine" for that particular day. Curiosity is engaged, and you have a relatively painless experience.
2. All of the above, but you do it really tough, with lots of screaming and distress.
Once a routine is learnt, it's really difficult to break. But you can create new routines for different environments. Preparation is generally key.
There are some people who are stuck in a state where everything is new, they can't make memories. For some it's the opposite, they can't alter what they already know without a whole lot of friction.
Hats off to both the airport staff for being willing and able to make this as seamless as it sounds like it is, and to the parents who realized the importance of making this a priority for their child.
I'm also pretty sure that there aren't many regulations on flight numbers. As long as ATC knows who you are, the government doesn't care what you tell your passengers you are.
And generally there are so many flights airborne in UK airspace that the published flight number isn't the one given to ATC.
For example, EZY26FR currently overhead my location is published in the timetables as EZY602, but that number can be easily misheard, misquoted or subject to namespace collision on the radio so the airlines are encouraged to use alpha-num callsigns instead.
It really annoys me as someone who likes consistency. Why not just publish the actual callsign in the timetable instead of maintaining two systems and cross-referencing between them?
Hats off to the airport staff for being so accommodating, definitely. But I wonder about the parents. They've gone to great lengths to ensure their son is able to travel and their heart is in the right place. But what happens when the airport can no longer facilitate these conditions? The shit storm that will be unleashed will be ferocious since his expectations have been set in stone over time.
I understand that routine is very important to a number of autistic people. But not everything can be controlled. Staff move on, different passengers travel on different days and the weather changes. There are infinite variables.
My particular strategy would be to control the things that can be controlled. Introduce artificial events that you can keep constant. Perhaps a set of clothes designed only for flights. A trip to a fast food outlet on the way to the airport. A particular toy or electronic device (radio?) for the trip. This all sets up an expectation for what is about to happen, hopefully reducing the need for specific events - like the same airport staff being in a particular place, or the same seats on a flight.
And maybe the parents have tried all of this before or know it just won't work with their son. Everybody is different, and not all strategies work with the same people. But I think they're setting themselves up big time if they don't start slowly removing the 'constants' that can't be indefinitely controlled.
Since he flies out of LHR 4 times a year, one can only presume that he flies back also. What happens in the return flight? Who helps him at the departure airpost (BOS?)? Who helps him in Immigration at LHR, which is a nightmare even for non-autistic travelers?
Why get so outraged?
I'm all for being good to fellow humans, but as Spock said, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
You see it all the time on Wikipedia. "If only we banned [topic speaker doesn't care about] we could finally make some progress on [topic speaker does care about]." But it ignores how people really work.
If you yell at people doing something good, they're not going to go do the other good thing you want. They're correctly going to ignore you. If you force the issue, they'll leave. Or if they can't, they'll turn into perfunctory drones.
It's not like BA's spending some large amount of money on this. I see no additional expense at all. The people doing it are doing it out of love and compassion. There's no reason to think that this will prevent them from being loving and compassionate to others. If anything, it may help other travelers, in that these people are a) developing their capacity to care about their customers as people, and b) doing something that provides much-needed variety in a parade of hurried, anxious, grumpy, entitled customers.
[1]: http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/transport/air_transpo... [2]: http://www.reducedmobility.eu/20130730347/The-News/airline-l...
On the other hand, the Heathrow staff (many of them of Indian origin themselves) treat every brown international traveler like a probable terrorist.
Heathrow could and should do a lot more to make travel a better experience for the many, rather than (only) for the special one.
My daughter is "on the spectrum" and we try very hard to not create situations that require us to jump through hoops to avoid her autistic meltdowns. If she makes unreasonable requests, we have to say no and steer her away.
For instance, at one point she asked us to remove the tags from her stuffed animal. Then it became a requirement to remove all tags. It's taken a while to cure her if that trigger.
On the other hand, if we ever need to know the name of a particular dinosaur, she has us covered.
How did you communicate the "demise" of the brontosaurus?
For example, if the store is a Dixon's.. modifying the signage before he walks in as to make him believe it's the HMV?
If the person can fully grasp the differences (and realizes that what they are seeing isn't reality), then I could completely be on board with that.
In some ways, they already are by recreating his previous experiences.
AR could in effect just enhance the carefully crafted reality and help out this person.
- 20 minute bus rides between TERMINALS - Then its time for the queues from hell.
- Also, a landing card is required for transit to Ireland. (But no where else.)
- Time for another queue. Just cause.
- You must take a subway to get anywhere in Terminal 5.
- Making a connection? Be prepared for total confusion on where to go, which terminal your flight is in, and which gate its at.
- Terminal 5 is nice looking, the rest are claustrophobic ghettos.
- Watch the movie Brasil.
I don't want to defend Heathrow but you need a landing card in this case as it is your entry point to the Common Travel Area [1].
I mean there is no other alternative?
Will virtual simulations one day help calm and treat people with these disorders?
I'll agree on the gate thing, though. They really want you to sit around in that god damned shopping mall for as long as possible. Get elite status and sit in the lounge. Much better.
The security "might" be impressive, but often there's no real coordination so I've felt this is largely theater. I was wandering around while looking for the security office and not once was I stopped and asked where I was going.
No one knew where the security office was. One of my travel companions got lost and wound up there and I had to ask 6 different people (I don't know if they were security, but had uniforms and radios) and all of them gave me the "try over there" treatment.
Gate announcements are invariably late so you either make it barely on time or not at all. I know this is something we have to keep an eye on, but tired people tend to fall asleep.
It also doesn't help that it's one of the most confusing airports I've ever been through. Probably only second to Charles De Gaulle. The language used on most sign posts is English, allegedly, but of no dialect I'm familiar with and with no obviousness at a distance.
I don't know if they've changed these things since the last time (it's been a couple of years), but it was really quite terrible.