DENTON, Texas — Amy Wang-Hiller’s American Airlines flight had just landed. Airport staff hoisted her onto an aisle chair, wheeling her to the jet bridge. From there, she was transferred to an airport wheelchair, then rolled to the concourse. As she approached the gate – she noticed her mobility chair - out of position and covered in dirt.
“I don’t know why it’s in that position,” you hear her say in the video she recorded of the incident.
It’s moments like these that give Wang-Hiller anxiety each time she books a flight -- being away from her chair and not knowing what state it’ll be in when she lands.
"I always am looking at it, my chair, out the widow and sometimes I do see my chair,” she said. “And I’m like, oh, please like, fingers crossed that it would be just the same way it is when I left it.”
Those feelings stem from the multiple occasions she says she’s had to file claims with American Airlines over things like pieces of her chair not making it to her final destination
“Mostly the armrests and sometimes with the back rest,” she said. “The wheelchairs are basically our legs and that's how we can move around and they when they don’t treat those properly, it means they didn't treat us properly as a human beings.”
So when she learned the Department of Transportation is fining American $50 million for its mistreatment of passengers with disabilities, she felt validated and optimistic.
“I think this is needed like this is definitely a positive thing,” Wang-Hiller said.
The DOT says they looked at data over a five-year span from 2019 to 2023 and found that American Airlines mishandled thousands of wheelchairs, making it one of the worst performers out of the US carriers.
“This is a huge deviation from prior determinations. It's 25 times larger than the previous largest penalty they've given,” said Katherine Lejeune, an attorney with Disability Rights Texas. “Hopefully this will be an example for other airlines to sort of fix the issues before they get a $50 million fine.”
Under the agreement, American Airlines will pay a $25 million fine directly to the U.S. Treasury. The remaining $25 million the airline will be credited for investments in airline equipment like a wheelchair tracking system and compensating passengers whose rights the agency said were violated during that five-year window.
The investigation was prompted in part by three formal complaints the Paralyzed Veterans of America filed against American, heighted by a now viral video from 2023 showing an incident at Miami International Airport last year. Workers slid a wheelchair down a baggage ramp. It crashed into the bottom of the chute, flipped over and skittered across the concrete.
“The era of tolerating poor treatment of wheelchair users on airplanes is over,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a statement.
In a statement American Airlines said: “Today's agreement reaffirms American’s commitment to taking care of all of our customers.”
Wang-Hiller said she just hopes the changes are flushed through by her next flight.