Tampa International Airport is testing drive-it-yourself power wheelchairs, which allow a traveler to move around the airport and to the gate area without a helper or wheelchair attendant. Similar chairs have been tested at other airports and are in use at Tokyo Haneda.
In the U.S., the Department of Transportation requires airlines to make wheelchairs and assistance available on request, and the airport isn't planning these to replace that service; instead it hopes airlines will fund it as an add-on to the attendant service, and give at least some travelers more control over their mobility.
The chairs, branded 'Whill' but pronounced 'wheel' are available from a stand near most of the airport's check-in counters. Passengers can either request one, or it might be offered by an agent. The airport says it may help resolve a staffing problem: it is being tried “out of our concern for lack of skycap availability and the increase in passengers traveling with restricted mobility.”
A future possibility is autonomous versions of chairs like this that would take passengers to their destinations, and then return on their own to the stand.
The number of passengers requesting wheelchair assistance in airports has been increasing faster than the growth in air travel, for two reasons: First, a "gray wave" of older travelers who continue to travel actively but find airports difficult because of long walking distances, and second the increasing distances that even those more mobile find daunting, especially when rushing and managing hand baggage.
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