Teenage Girl Uses Sign Language To Calm Blind And Deaf Plane Passenger

TheTravel

By Josh Coulson

Published Jun 26, 2018

On an Alaskan Airlines flight, a blind-deaf man was having trouble communicating, so an ASL-speaking teenager helped out.

via nytimes.com

When a passenger on a US flight was struggling to communicate a fifteen-year-old girl stepped up and came to his aid.

For a lot of us, flying on an airplane can be stressful at the best of times. Crammed onto an aircraft thousands of feet in the air with hundreds of strangers, sometimes for hours at a time. That doesn't even take into account those of us who have a fear of flying, or if we have a crying baby sat behind us for the duration of the flight.

Now imagine how stressful an experience flying must be if you are both deaf and blind. That's something Tim Cook knows all about. The 64-year-old was recently traveling on a flight to Los Angeles and understandably had a hard time communicating with the flight attendants. The Alaska Airlines staff tried their best to help Mr. Cook but struggled to do so.

Eventually, the staff had the bright idea of asking if any of the passengers on the flight knew American sign language. Thankfully somebody did, fifteen-year-old Clara Daly. The New York Times reported on the touching story and it has naturally gone viral on social media. Lynette Scribner, a passenger sat in the same row as Mr. Cook, described the situation and shared the experience via a Facebook post.

"I don’t know when I’ve ever seen so many people rally to take care of another human being," Ms. Scribner wrote on her Facebook page. Apparently, Clara spoke to Mr. Cook a number of times throughout the duration of the flight using sign language, sometimes for up to half an hour. It's plain to see from the photos and the re-telling of the story that she was a massive help to the man for the entirety of the journey.

Airports and airplanes aren't places you normally associate with feel-good stories like this one. We normally associate them with rigorous security checks, uncomfortable seats, and bland food. Not every flight has to be like that though. If you keep an eye out maybe you will be witness to an act like Clara's, or perhaps hers and Mr. Cook's interaction will inspire you to do something similar in the future if faced with a situation like this one.

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