The moment your chair stops being yours is at the end of the jet bridge. Someone loops a tag around the frame, and it goes down a lift into a cargo hold built for suitcases, handled by a crew that moved forty bags before it got to yours. Then you sit in 14C for four hours with no way to know what is happening under the floor. When the plane lands, the chair either comes back the way you handed it over, or it doesn't.

In 2025, airlines carried 907,259 wheelchairs and scooters and mishandled roughly 9,900 of them, about 27 a day, according to the Department of Transportation's February 2026 Air Travel Consumer Report. The rate has been falling for several years running, from 1.26 percent in 2024 to 1.09 percent last year. Those averages describe an industry, not the afternoon your chair comes up the lift with a bent frame and a footplate hanging off it.

The Rule Written to Protect You Is on Pause

In December 2024, the DOT issued a rule making the mishandling of a wheelchair an automatic violation of the Air Carrier Access Act. The centerpiece sits in 14 CFR 382.130(a): an airline must return a checked device in the condition it received it, and when it fails to, a rebuttable presumption kicks in. The airline is presumed to have broken your chair, and the airline has to prove otherwise.

On September 30, 2025, the DOT delayed enforcement of that presumption until December 31, 2026, along with three other provisions, while it drafts a replacement rulemaking. Airlines had sued over the original rule that February, and the case remains in the Fifth Circuit.

The pause leaves the burden of proof exactly where it has always sat. The evidence that your chair was whole when you handed it over is evidence you have to create before you hand it over.

Build the Folder Before You Leave the House

Photograph the chair from every side, then get close: frame joints, welds, casters, footplates, armrests, seat back, battery box, controller mount. Do the same set again at the airport, on the jet bridge, minutes before the handoff. Airport photographs carry timestamps that fall inside the airline's custody window, which is the window any dispute will turn on.

Record the serial number of the chair and of each removable component. Bring a copy of the original purchase invoice, because under 14 CFR 382.131 the standard baggage liability caps do not apply to mobility aids on domestic flights. The regulation says compensation for a lost, damaged, or destroyed device is calculated from the original purchase price. A $32,000 power chair destroyed on a flight from Denver to Newark is a $32,000 obligation, not a capped baggage payout, and the invoice is the document that fixes the number.

Tape written handling instructions to the frame: how the chair folds, where to lift, how to disengage the motors, your name and phone number. Note the battery type, non-spillable or lithium-ion, along with the watt-hour rating. Then carry the vulnerable parts into the cabin with you. The joystick controller, seat cushion, headrest, and footrests are the pieces that get sheared off in a cargo hold, and they are the pieces small enough to ride in the overhead bin.

What to Ask For at the Gate

Tell the airline about a powered chair when you book, and again about 48 hours out. Carriers are allowed to require advance notice to arrange battery handling on certain aircraft, and a chair that surprises the ramp crew is a chair that gets improvised with.

Ask that the chair be returned to you at the aircraft door rather than at baggage claim. Gate delivery shortens the time the device spends in someone else's hands and puts you in front of the damage while the crew that caused it is still standing there.

Airlines now have to publish cargo hold dimensions for every aircraft type on their public websites, a provision of the 2024 rule that remains in force. Checking the hold on your specific aircraft before booking is the difference between a chair that fits upright and a chair that gets laid on its side.

When the Chair Comes Back Broken

Do not leave the airport. Ask for the Complaints Resolution Official by title.

Every carrier operating aircraft with 19 or more seats has to make a CRO available at each airport during all hours it operates there, in person or by phone at no cost to you, under 14 CFR 382.151. A CRO is required to be thoroughly familiar with Part 382 and to hold authority to make a dispositive resolution of your complaint. That authority includes the power to overrule any other airline employee, with the pilot in command as the single exception. Gate agents rarely volunteer this, though personnel are obligated to tell you about your right to reach a CRO once a disability-related complaint isn't resolved on the spot.

Get the damage documented in writing before you walk out of the terminal. Most contracts of carriage set short reporting windows, often 24 hours, and a claim filed from your kitchen table three days later starts from a weaker position than one filed at the counter.

What the Airline Owes You Today

Several obligations from the 2024 rule are enforceable right now, and they are not among the four provisions the DOT paused.

After a mishandling, the airline must notify you in writing of your right to file a claim, to receive a loaner device, to choose your own repair vendor, and to contact a CRO. When your chair is delayed rather than damaged, the carrier must transport it to your final destination within 24 hours of your own arrival on domestic flights and on international flights of 12 hours or less. While you wait for a repair or a replacement, the airline must use best efforts to provide an adequate loaner and must pay for it, along with the cost of getting your chair to the vendor you pick.

Since June 17, 2026, frontline employees and contractors who physically handle wheelchairs must have completed hands-on training with mannequins or demonstration equipment and must pass an annual competency assessment. Airlines had a fixed deadline to train their staff on disability assistance, and a crew that damaged your chair through untrained handling is a crew whose employer has a compliance problem worth naming in your complaint.

Four provisions are suspended until December 31, 2026: the presumption of a violation when a chair comes back damaged, reimbursement of the fare difference when your chair won't fit on your preferred flight, the pre-departure written notice of your claim rights, and the required frequency of refresher training. The rest of the rule stands. An enforcement pause does not change what the Air Carrier Access Act itself guarantees.

International Flights Have a Ceiling

Cross a border and the Montreal Convention governs the claim instead. Its baggage liability limit rose to 1,519 Special Drawing Rights, roughly $2,000, effective December 28, 2024. A power chair runs $15,000 to $40,000, and the shortfall on a destroyed device lands on the passenger.

Article 22(2) of the Convention offers a way around the ceiling. A passenger may make a special declaration of interest at check-in and pay a supplementary fee, which raises the carrier's liability limit to the declared value. The declaration has to happen at the counter, before the chair is accepted, and the fee is small measured against a five-figure device. Written notice of damage is due within 7 days of receiving the chair, and within 21 days for a delay.

If a carrier stalls past those deadlines or refuses a properly documented claim, the DOT's Aviation Consumer Protection office accepts complaints directly, and a docketed federal complaint tends to move a claims department that a phone call could not.

The Folder Is the Argument

A wheelchair is not a suitcase, and the paperwork you carry is what makes that difference legible to a system that would otherwise treat it as one. An invoice, a serial number, and forty timestamped photographs turn an argument about what happened into a conversation about what it costs to fix. Keep a maintenance record for the chair in the same folder, and if you fly often in a power chair, a manual backup is what stands between a damaged frame and a week in a hotel room waiting on a loaner that never came.