Major Airliner Changes Ordered to Aid Disabled : Transportation: Wheelchairs and movable armrests are among new rules. The industry opposes the move.

Moving for the first time to address the needs of handicapped airline passengers, the government Friday announced rules requiring commercial airlines to make extensive equipment and policy changes to improve access and services for the disabled.

The Department of Transportation regulations will require all new airliners with more than 30 seats to be equipped with movable armrests on half of their aisle seats, allowing people in wheelchairs to seat themselves without being lifted into place.

The rules, which will take effect on April 5, require new wide-body aircraft to be equipped with restrooms that are accessible to the handicapped and with special wheelchairs that can clear a plane’s narrow aisles.

Airlines will be required to install the movable aisle armrests on all existing planes as the seats are replaced, which typically occurs every seven or eight years, the agency said.

The rules limit the ability of airlines to refuse service to the handicapped, prohibit restrictions on where they can sit except for safety reasons and mandate that, if attendants are required to accompany disabled passengers, they must do so at no charge.

The agency estimated that the changes, which include policy and sensitivity training for flight attendants and ticketing personnel, will cost airlines $20 million annually for the next 21 years. The special restrooms alone will cost an estimated $40,000 each.

Most advocacy groups for the disabled hailed the measures, hammered out during more than a year of negotiations with organizations representing paralyzed veterans, the blind, the deaf and the mentally disabled.

One exception was the National Federation of the Blind, which vowed to fight a related Federal Aviation Administration regulation, also approved Friday, that will bar the blind and other disabled people from sitting next to emergency exits.

The proposals met with immediate industry opposition. The Air Transport Assn., which represents America’s commercial air carriers, attacked the Department of Transportation rules as “unnecessary, expensive and inconvenient.”

“The rule(s) will impose an unacceptable economic burden on the airlines and all their passengers,” the Air Transport Assn. said in a statement.

In particular, the industry group criticized the Transportation Department’s decision to give wheelchairs priority for storage in carry-on compartments and to require movable aisle armrests.

“The rule exacts a high price--in safety, dollars and service--to accommodate a small percentage of air travelers who already are well served by the airlines,” the association said.

The changes are part of the transportation agency’s implementation of the Air Carrier Access Act of 1986, which prohibits airlines from discriminating against the handicapped. The measure was sponsored by Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.), a disabled World War II veteran.

The requirements address the “arbitrary and inconsistent behavior that handicapped passengers felt they’d been receiving,” said Bob Ashby, the Department of Transportation’s deputy assistant general counsel for regulation and enforcement.

“A carrier cannot say (any longer) that a person’s handicap is so unusual or so upsetting to other passengers that we won’t put the passenger on the plane, for the effect it would have on the other passengers,” Ashby said.

However, the Transportation Department will continue to allow “safety discretions” to be observed, such as refusing to admit a person if his or her disability would pose a threat to others.

In a related ruling, the FAA said that it will allow “only persons who can perform a series of functions necessary in an emergency evacuation” to sit in rows of seats next to emergency exits.

That ruling will allow airlines to bar from emergency-exit seats obese people, children under 15, the temporarily and permanently disabled, or “elderly people who are frail,” according to Tony Broderick, the FAA’s associate administrator for regulation and certification.

Some airlines currently follow such procedures, often screening passengers as they report at boarding gates.

“We’re doing everything to ensure everyone’s right to travel,” Broderick said.

The exit-seating restriction has come under sharp criticism from the National Federation of the Blind, which has fought the FAA and the airlines to ensure full seating rights for its members.

“The federal government does not have the right to force blind people to put their lives at greater risk than other passengers,” said Kenneth Jernigan, executive director of the 50,000-member group. “It’s an insult.

“The person who sits closest to the exit has the best chance of survival at the moment of crash,” said Jernigan, who is blind. “The FAA has told me my life is less valuable.”

Jernigan said the blind have ideal skills to deal with a crash situation, when smoke often floods the cabin and electricity fails. “No one can see then, but the blind are accustomed to that,” he said.

Oral Miller, executive director of the American Council of the Blind, said that an even greater concern is the tendency of airlines to patronize and embarrass disabled people in general by requiring them to change seats, for example.

Miller, who is blind, said he believes “the maximum level of dignity for blind people when traveling . . . will be remedied by far better training and sensitization for airline employees.”

The Transportation Department rules will require airlines to make some passengers travel with an attendant if their disability would keep them from understanding safety information or from assisting in their own evacuation.