Cruising Altitude is a weekly column about air travel. Have a suggestion for a future topic? Fill out the form or email me at the address at the bottom of this page.
“We have a long history of wheelchairs being damaged by airlines. No matter which airline we choose, we run into the same problem. I think every single time we fly, something is broken.”
That’s what Neena Nizar told me in Aug. 2023 after she and her two sons all had their electric wheelchairs damaged on Southwest Airlines flights.
Nizar and her sons have a rare skeletal disease, and we spoke as part of a tracking project I did in 2023, trying to get in touch with as many travelers as I could whose wheelchairs were damaged or destroyed by airlines.
In 2024, the most recent year for which full-year data is available, U.S. airlines collectively transported nearly 900,000 wheelchairs and scooters according to their own reporting to the Department of Transportation. Of those, 11,357 (1.26%) were reportedly damaged or destroyed in transit. It’s a very slight improvement over 2023, when 1.38% of the mobility devices airlines transported were mishandled.
