On Aug. 21, 2024, at 8:20 p.m., while seated in the first row of Southwest Flight 3313, I witnessed a miracle. This is my earnest attempt to document that miracle so the appropriate religious and scientific parties can study and learn from it. …

Approximately three hours earlier, I was waiting to preboard at the appropriate gate in Denver International Airport. As a power chair user, I always arrive early to talk with the gate attendants and baggage crew to try and ensure my chair is handled properly. It has been broken so many times when flying, that prior to this trip I’d have considered it a small miracle if it arrived in one piece. After witnessing the miracle of Flight 3313, that seems blasphemous.

It had been a few years since I’d flown, and throughout that time I’d heard all the complaints about how air travel had changed for the worse: ruder passengers, more-callous airlines, poorly trained staff. I had prepared myself for all of them.

One common complaint I’d heard was that a growing number of travelers were “faking” disabilities to take advantage of preboarding. Earlier this year, the CEO of Frontier Airlines made headlines for calling out the “massive, rampant abuse.” As an educated disability advocate, I scoffed at his statement.

Every disability doesn’t come with an obvious signifier like my power chair. Hidden disabilities are real, and I’d like to think our society is advanced enough to accommodate them equally. With that in mind, I tried paying scant attention to the growing huddle of preboarders massing at the gate.

One particularly chatty woman seated beside me in an airport-issue wheelchair kept undermining my efforts. She was what Jerry Seinfeld would have called a “loud talker.” Speaking just loud enough for everyone in a 10-foot vicinity to hear, she rattled off her litany of ailments and disabilities for upwards of 15 minutes.

She was still rambling when I headed down the jetway to board. Minutes later I watched as her husband and the gate attendant painstakingly helped her onto the plane. With her cane in one hand and her other arm bracing against the plane, she slowly made her way to her spot across the aisle and slightly behind me, and collapsed into the seat — bemoaning her pain the entire time.

I didn’t think about her or any of the other preboarders again until we landed. A combination of low blood pressure and increased spasticity made the three-hour flight seem like an eternity. I did my best to zone out and push through, by turns dreaming about getting back in my wheelchair and praying it arrived in one piece.

Having long ago accepted the “first on, last off” tradeoff that comes with preboarding, I didn’t flinch when the flight attendant announced that we had arrived and could begin deplaning. Zoned out with my headphones on, I almost missed the loud talker flashing by me — one of the first passengers to deplane. Without any assistance, she was up and out before I even realized what was happening. Her husband followed with her cane in tow. She had been cured!

I looked around, expecting to see other passengers marveling at her recovery, but they seemed oblivious. Even the flight staff looked nonchalant about the miracle we had just witnessed. Somewhere in the three-plus hours it took to fly from Denver to Portland, something stunning had happened. This proudly disabled woman had been healed, and no one seemed to care!

I wanted to talk to her about what happened, but by the time I got to baggage claim she was long gone. I pictured her running through the terminal, juggling her bags.

I’ve since resigned myself to never knowing exactly what transpired on Flight 3313. All I can do is wait for my next flight and hope it holds a miracle for me.