Wheelchair user refused Eurostar boarding despite booking an accessible space

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A disability activist and wheelchair user said she was prevented from checking in for Eurostar in Paris because she had not booked a ramp prior to her journey, despite holding a wheelchair space ticket.

Sam Jennings, 46, who uses an electric wheelchair, posted on X (formerly Twitter) on Sunday that Eurostar was “being ridiculous” by telling her she needed to book a ramp on top of purchasing a wheelchair space on the train.

“I BOOKED the wheelchair space on a wheelchair priced fare for these trains & I’ve been refused check in BY Eurostar because I haven’t booked a ramp even though I explicitly asked is there anything else I need to do when I was HERE EARLIER,” she wrote, tagging the railway company.

After Eurostar replied to Jennings asking for her booking reference, she questioned why she also needed to book a ramp when she had paid for a wheelchair ticket.

“Why do we have to have an additional layer/task to travel with you to book a ramp? I’ve paid YOU for a wheelchair space, I know it’s 2024 but wheelchairs can’t levitate onto inaccessible trains yet. It should be automatically booked,” she added.

Jennings told the BBC that the staff at Gare du Nord station in Paris had "watched me queue to check in, then turned me round when I got to the front and sent me away to the office" to book a ramp.

She added to The Independent that when she was sent away from the check-in, they had not asked for her name or her ticket. “They just said: ‘No, you need to go and get the paper for the ramp,’ so they did not know it was me. They couldn’t possibly have been able to check my booking.”

After messaging Eurostar on X, Jennings said that a ramp was eventually provided so she could board the train to London, but she said that the incident had been “humiliating” and an “irritant”.

Jennings, who was in Paris for the Paralympic Games, said that she checked with staff earlier that day to make sure there was nothing else she needed to do before her trip to the UK, but she was told she did not need to do anything.

When the activist then did try to sort out the ramp, she was asked to present papers showing that she needed it, despite being in a wheelchair, describing this to the BBC as “petty power play”.

A Eurostar spokesperson told the BBC that they “apologise for this experience and understand the anxiety this must have caused the passenger while they waited for the issue to be resolved”.

They continued: "After further investigation, we’ve discovered due to human error, the passenger’s ramp booking was missed when the information was shared between systems.

"Rest assured that when a passenger books a wheelchair space on our London routes, the ramp is automatically reserved.

"On this occasion, we acknowledge this is an error on our part. We are improving our systems and tools is a key focus for us, and work has already begun to address this."

In a further statement to The Independent, a Eurostar spokesperson said they “apologise that the information given on X was incorrect and want to clarify that our policy has not changed.

“On our London routes, when a wheelchair space is reserved at least 24 hours in advance, there is no need to book a ramp separately through the contact centre. This is because the wheelchair booking is automatically flagged in our Eurostar Departure Control System, alerting the station to expect a passenger requiring a ramp. This process applies to journeys to or from London.

They added: “Limited communication via social media led to initial misunderstandings about the issue, as the passenger did not want to be contacted via phone,” they added. “Resolving this issue is our top priority, and we greatly appreciate the passenger’s patience and valuable feedback as we work to improve our systems and enhance the overall experience.”

Disability Rights UK, an organisation that strives to influence change for disabled people, told The Independent that the incident emphasises “ongoing problems of the Rail industry in its inconsistent treatment of disabled passengers”.

Their statement said: “All too often we find that across services on UK services including Eurostar, communication failures within a train company between staff about assistance required will have a serious impact on the passenger.

“We are clear that better training of all staff of the impact of failure is essential to avoid the imbalance of some passengers, as with other wheelchair users on Eurostar, getting full assistance and others getting an appalling experience.”

Eurostar is the official travel partner of both ParalympicsGB and TeamGB.

Jennings said she felt that she was treated like “a nuisance” while travelling around Paris for the Paralympic Games.

She told The Independent that she planned her travel around Paris, checking that the buses would be accessible and running after she was unable to book the shuttles and discovering the Metro is not completely accessible. She even allowed for an extra hour on Sunday morning before travelling to the wheelchair basketball women’s finals because she expected someone to “drop the ball at some point”.

However, in the end, Jennings “didn’t get to the basketball because it was all inaccessible. No one had mentioned or put any signs up, and there was no alerts that there were going to be no busses into Paris on the Sunday morning, and I was staying on the outskirts because of the marathon”.

This is not the first time Jennings said she has experienced “zero access fails.” She said she has counted more than 30 incidents "from being left on trains to people refusing to help me with the ramp”.

She said that situations like these can be “insulting, belittling and infuriating”, especially on Victorian-era railways in the UK that do not have level access.

“We need people to put the ramps down, and we need people to be responsive and ready to do that and not treat us like we’ve made them do an extra thing that they can come to work to do today,” she said.

For more travel news and advice, listen to Simon Calder’s podcast