Guide

The airline broke your wheelchair. Here's the playbook.

A wheelchair is not luggage. For the person in it, a broken chair means a broken trip, and sometimes weeks of being stranded on a loaner that doesn't fit.

US airlines report their own numbers to the Department of Transportation: roughly 1.4 to 1.5 of every 100 wheelchairs and scooters they carry come back damaged, delayed, or lost. That is thousands of devices a year, and until recently, consequences were rare.

The 2024 DOT wheelchair rule changed the math: mishandling a wheelchair is now automatically a violation of the Air Carrier Access Act. The airline owes prompt repair or replacement, at its choice of your vendor or theirs, and a loaner that meets your needs in the meantime.

The playbook: before you leave the airport, ask for the Complaint Resolution Official — every airline must have one available, by that exact title. Get a written damage report. Photograph everything. File the airline's claim, and then file with DOT at transportation.gov/airconsumer — the DOT complaint is what shows up in the airline's public mishandling numbers, and it is the one they actually feel.