When you live with a mobility disability, your mobility aids become an extension of yourself. You’re dependent on them. Their maintenance and timely repair means your quality of life. Participating in life feels like taking a risk, when accessing services out in society jeopardizes that mobility equipment.
If you’ve ever flown on an airplane as a wheelchair user, you may have experienced property damage firsthand. A 2022 study found that commercial airlines damage as many as 1000 wheelchairs per month.
For a wheelchair user, flying can be a nightmare: you’re manhandled by inexperienced staff to get into the aisle chair and seat, and on most planes, forget the accessible bathroom: hope it’s a short flight! The best part about flying is being reunited with my fully operable wheelchair- in tact, rather than a mangled mess.
But now, one carrier is being held accountable for wheelchair damage.
American Airlines has consistently put personal, medical mobility property at risk, damaging not hundreds, but thousands of wheelchairs. They put passengers themselves at risk, causing bodily injury too.
The Transportation Department fined the carrier $50 million for “unsafe and undignified” treatment of passengers with disabilities from 2019 through 2023.
A penalty of such magnitude for violating disability protections is unprecedented but it won’t be isolated. The Department of Transportation has active investigations into similar potential violations at other U.S. airlines.
United Airlines last year said it would take new measures to accommodate wheelchair users, following a similar Transportation Department investigation.
American Airlines said it has invested $175 million this year on specialized equipment to transport wheelchairs, and they plan on utilizing high-tension straps in cargo holds. The airline will use automated tags to communicate wheelchair instructions systemwide. In some airports they have attached miniature elevators to jet bridges to avoid throwing fragile items down a baggage chute.
These measures, although too late for thousands of passengers, got the $50 million fine cut in half. We can only hope the improvements aren’t too little as well as too late.
When airlines damage wheelchairs on domestic flights, they are responsible for paying up to the cost of the wheelchair. They are also liable for offering some type of loaner equipment.
What happens when an airline damages your wheelchair?
The airline at fault certainly doesn’t wheel a new mobility device customized to your need onto the tarmac when they damage yours.
Instead you are tasked with the challenges that come with being stripped of the independence and autonomy your wheelchair affords you.
You’re tasked with how to get your body through the airport and outside into a vehicle. The airline has to loan you a wheelchair but does it fit your body? Can you operate it independently?
Imagine rolling independently through the airport to start your vacation, and upon arrival your option is to be pushed manually in a loaner chair.
Then there’s the wait!
Forget vacation, your equipment might take months to access. Standard wait times for new mobility equipment to come in and mobility aid repairs to be performed are already much too long, at 6-8 weeks.
If your mobility equipment is damaged by an airline contact the airline’s Complaint Resolution Official about a loaner, and file a complaint with the airline within 45 days.
We want to hear your airline experience.
Was your mobility equipment damaged by an airline?
Have you been compensated for those damages?
If so, how long did you have to wait?
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