Amid this summer's travel chaos, airline passengers with disabilities are increasingly abandoned, receiving damaged wheelchairs, or facing life-threatening injuries amid the latest airline chaos. Here's why.
Vicky Leta/Insider
- As air travel returns, passengers are reporting mass delays, cancellations, and lost baggage.
- Wheelchair users are caught in the chaos, risking lost or damaged wheelchairs or even life-threatening injuries.
- The Department of Transportation cited a 108% increase in complaints from disabled flyers.
In her three decades of flying with a wheelchair, Amy Scherer never quite dealt with the level of chaos and ineptitude with airline staff as she did on her recent round trip between North Carolina and Georgia.
Her June trip began with issues finding an aisle chair — something passengers in wheelchairs need to get through the narrow aisle of the plane, which can't accommodate typical wheelchairs. And it ended with Scherer relying on a cleaning staff member to help her get off the seat and back onto an aisle chair to deplane.
"She's literally in her cleaning outfit, cleaning the seats and she sees that (the staff) doesn't know how to help me," Scherer told Insider. "So she puts her cleaning supplies down and says, 'I've seen them do this, I'll help you.'"
Scherer, who is an attorney for the National Disability Rights Network and was born with cerebral palsy, is far from the first person with a disability to experience airline woes. But persistent staff shortages — from TSA agents to flight attendants and pilots — amid the return of air travel are creating a nightmare concoction of delays, cancellations, and lost baggage. And people with wheelchairs are once again the latest casualties.
Wheelchair users are reporting problems they've experienced for years, even after the passage of the Air Carrier Access Act of 1986, which outlawed discrimination against passengers with disabilities: Chairs are damaged or lost, flyers are abandoned in the plane or at the airport, and some have experienced life-threatening injuries due to airline hiccups or an underprepared staff, despite federal law mandating proper training.
One woman who has fibromyalgia and lupus and needs a wheelchair recently told Insider that she was stuck at multiple points in her journey, at times stranded at the airport with other wheelchair users. She reached her final destination 14 hours later than expected.
Federal laws mandate wheelchair assistance at airports and properly trained staff to administer it. But Scherer and many like her are experiencing something different.
"I never felt, until this time, that the staff didn't know how to do what they were supposed to do, and they didn't understand the responsibility of their position," Scherer said.
While air travel is making a comeback, the industry has yet to make a full recovery. According to a May report from the Bureau of Transportation, there were more than 580,000 domestic flights in March 2022. That's about 86% of flights seen in March 2019.
But what has surpassed pre-pandemic levels is the number of grievances placed against airlines, including from passengers with disabilities.
A July report from the Department of Transportation recorded a 108% increase in complaints from flyers with disabilities, from 76 in May 2019 to 158 in the same month this year.
"I couldn't believe that," said Charlie Brown, president of Paralyzed Veterans of America, when looking at the increase of complaints against airlines this year. "You guys have gotten so bad that things are worse after this? This has got to change."
In 2019, Brown, who has used a wheelchair since 1986 after suffering a cervical neck fracture while in the US Marine Corps, personally experienced the painful impacts of dealing with undertrained staff.
When two employees tried to transfer Brown from his wheelchair to an aisle chair, one of the workers dropped his legs causing the other staff member to drop Brown on his tailbone.
At first, the veteran felt "mostly embarrassed." It happened while people were still around the jetway, he said. But during the flight to Dallas, Brown noticed how he began to sweat — an unusual occurrence for someone with a spinal cord injury.
"I don't sweat from heat, I sweat from injuries," Brown said. "I knew something was wrong."
At the end of his trip, Brown said he found blood on the cushion of his seat. He initially blew it off, being the "stubborn marine" that he is. But after feeling increasing pain, the veteran went to the hospital and learned that the drop had caused a severe infection called osteomyelitis which attacks and softens the bones. The infection had crept up from his tailbone to his spinal cord.
Brown was bedridden for a month before doctors performed life-saving surgery. After the operation, he was left on antibiotics for another six weeks.
By then, Brown said he lost his right to file a complaint because the incident was not immediately reported at the airport.
Heather Ansley, the associate executive director of government relations for Paralyzed Veterans of America, told Insider that passengers have a six-month window to file a complaint through the Department of Transportation, which would then be sent to the airlines.
However, a lot of passengers don't know that they can file a complaint through the DOT. The "vast majority" of complaints are sent directly to airlines and they provide smaller windows, Ansley said.
Similar incidents have occurred, in which wheelchair users developed serious infections from an injury sustained during or after a flight, Brown said.
In 2021, Engracia Figueroa, a disabled rights activist, had her $30,000 motorized wheelchair — built to the exact specifications of her body — "flattened like a pancake" during a flight with United Airlines, according to her former attorney Joshua Markowitz.
She was forced to wait six to seven hours at the airport in a manual wheelchair that Markowitz claims reopened an old sore.
About three months later, Figueroa died at the age of 51 from complications of an ulcer. Markowitz, who is representing Figueroa's siblings in a lawsuit against United Airlines, maintains that the incident directly led to her death.
"When you have some who was a quadriplegic ... a wheelchair is not just their only tool to be able to function normally, it's an irreplaceable tool," he said. "You can't just say, 'The chairs' broken, here's another chair.' Giving her another chair killed her."
The lawsuit was filed a few weeks ago. Markowitz said United Airlines had asked for an extension to respond to the suit.
A spokesperson from United Airlines declined to comment on an ongoing lawsuit but said the company's "priority is to provide a safe and comfortable journey for all our customers, especially those who require additional assistance or the use of a wheelchair."
"I was lucky I survived," Brown, the PVA president, said, reflecting on Figueroa's fate. "That was the most severe injury I've ever had flying. I really didn't ever want to fly after that."
The state of air travel may seem more chaotic today, but Ansley said that, prior to the pandemic, the industry's trajectory was already set on a decline in flight quality for those with disabilities.
Planes are flying much fuller than they used to, she said. Less crowded flights meant that it was "routine" to bump someone up from coach to first class if there were any issues.
There's also more pressure for airlines to cut turn times — the time it takes for an airplane to land and take off for the next flight.
"The longer it's on the ground, it's not making money. It needs to be in the air and headed off to its next destination," Ansley said. "So all of those things have not been friendly to passengers with disabilities who typically may require more time to be able to have their devices loaded for them to be safely brought onto the aircraft."
Activists and organizations continue to advocate for stronger laws and improvements around the flight experience for people with disabilities.
On July 26, the Department of Transportation released the Airline Passengers with Disabilities Bill of Rights, which outlines the ten fundamental rights of passengers with disabilities. It does not expand upon laws that already exist under the Air Carrier Access Act.
The ACAA codified laws against discrimination toward people with disabilities, but Ansley and other policy experts say that it's not enough.
"It was a great piece of legislation in the '80s, but it's shown a low of weaknesses over the last 40 years," Claire Stanley, a public policy analyst for the National Disability Rights Network said. "It needs a facelift."
Stanley said the language on accommodation for people with disabilities exists in the ACAA, but the accommodations provided are often "lackluster."
People will request guide assistance or wheelchair assistance at the airports but wait extended amounts of time, or there's very poor training for those providing assistance, she said.
Stanley and Ansley were members of the Air Carrier Access Act Advisory Committee that reports to the Secretary of Transportation. In February, the committee submitted a list of about 25 recommendations to better accommodate the air travel needs of passengers with disabilities.
They're categorized by ticketing practices and seating accommodation, stowage of assistive devices, and assistance at the airports and aircraft, along with training. Recommendations range from properly securing wheelchairs or scooters in stowage to providing airline personnel with "frequent" training.
Ansley said that the DOT has been reviewing the recommendations and looking at which stakeholder entities, including the airlines, would be responsible for implementing them.
"All of the recommendations were things that the vast majority of people can agree upon," Ansley said. "So what you see in the recommendations are those that have a broad level of support."
One thing that is left off the list that Stanley described as a "pie in the sky" goal: Universally designed aircrafts.
It's not just the aisles in planes, which are often too narrow to accommodate a wheelchair. In a single-aisle aircraft, bathrooms are not required to be wheelchair accessible. Ansley estimates that less than 5% of single-aisle airplanes have an accessible lavatory.
"When I'm on an aircraft, I can't use the bathroom," Brown, the president of PVA, said. "It's not suitable for me. So I'm being treated differently than any other traveler because I've had a disability."
In March, the DOT published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to improve access to lavatories for people with disabilities.
"Some passengers, knowing that they will not be able to use the toilet during a flight, dehydrate themselves so that they do not need to urinate," an announcement from the DOT said. "These actions can cause many adverse health effects. Other passengers use adult diapers or catheters, which they may find degrading and uncomfortable. Still, other wheelchair users avoid flying altogether."
Ansley added that it would also be ideal if wheelchair users could use their own wheelchair to fly. But airlines often see this as fewer seats to sell to passengers.
There are other simpler changes that can make an aircraft more accessible.
This could include carving a space at the beginning of the aircraft so that wheelchair users don't have to transfer to an aisle chair. That would eliminate the need for certain personnel training, and entirely avoid the situations Scherer or Brown were put in.
"Unless you design airplanes with accessibility in mind from the getgo, you're always gonna have problems," Stanley said.
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