American Airlines Fined Record $50 Million For Mistreating Disabled Passengers

The Department of Transportation (DOT) announced Wednesday a fine of $50 million levied on American Airlines for “numerous serious violations of the laws” that protect passengers with disabilities.

The fine is 25 times larger than the previous largest airline penalty for violations of disability protections. The agency called it “a new precedent for how DOT will enforce against such violations going forward.”

The Fort Worth-based reported a net profit of $822 million for fiscal year 2023, so the penalty represents 6% of the company’s earnings last year.

American Airlines directed Forbes to a statement about the settlement that says the carrier will “continue the airline’s significant actions to improve the travel experience for customers traveling with wheelchairs and mobility devices.”

The DOT’s investigation looked at passenger complaints reported between 2019 and 2023, uncovering “cases of unsafe physical assistance that at times resulted in injuries and undignified treatment of wheelchair users, in addition to repeated failures to provide prompt wheelchair assistance.” The body of evidence included three formal complaints filed by Paralyzed Veterans of America.

U.S. law requires airlines to provide a timely return of wheelchairs and other mobility devices in the condition in which they were received and to provide passengers with disabilities prompt assistance to get on and off aircraft including moving within the airport.

American said in its statement that in 2023 it received more than 8 million requests from customers for wheelchair assistance. Out of those, less than 1 in 1,000 customers submitted a disability-related complaint.

DOT contended that during the five-year period of its investigation, American mishandled “thousands of wheelchairs by damaging them or delaying their return, leaving travelers without the device they need for mobility.” One incident captured on video at the Miami International Airport showed American’s ground crew dropping a wheelchair down a baggage ramp.

“The era of tolerating poor treatment of airline passengers with disabilities is over,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. “With this penalty, we are setting a new standard of accountability for airlines that violate the civil rights of passengers with disabilities. By setting penalties at levels beyond a mere cost of doing business for airlines, we’re aiming to change how the industry behaves and prevent these kinds of abuses from happening in the first place.”

Between 1996 and 2020, DOT collectively issued $71 million in total penalties against airlines for consumer protection and civil rights violations. During the Biden-Harris Administration, the agency has tripled that amount, issuing nearly $225 million in penalties.

Last year, American Airlines was hit with a $4.1 million penalty for repeated tarmac delays of three hours or more on domestic flights without providing passengers an opportunity to deplane. The largest single penalty against an airline was a $140 million fine levied against Southwest Airlines for its 2022 meltdown during Winter Storm Elliott.

As part of the $50 million penalty, American Airlines must pay a $25 million fine to the U.S. Treasury and is required to spend the other $25 million on “investments in equipment to reduce incidents of wheelchair damage, investments in a systemwide wheelchair tagging system to reduce incidents of wheelchair delay, deployment of hub control center employees to coordinate wheelchair handling on a systemwide basis at large airports, and compensation for affected passengers during the timeframe covered by DOT’s investigation.” If American fails to make these investments, it will have to pay the second $25 million as a fine to the U.S. Treasury.

In its statement, American said: “In recognition of the special challenges passengers with disabilities face, in 2024 alone, American invested more than $175 million in services, infrastructure, training and new technology to help ease their journey and transport their specialized equipment.”

In July 2022, DOT published the Airline Passengers with Disabilities Bill of Rights to help travelers understand what they’re entitled to when they fly.