Wheelchair Users Share Air Travel Horror Stories

Stranded, Delayed and Frustrated 

Cyle Metzger 

On his way home from a work conference in New York City, Cyle Metzger was stranded in Chicago due to flight delays. Metzger, who travels regularly to conferences for his job as a professor of art history and gender studies, kept cool while his 8:45 p.m. flight was delayed multiple times. That changed when United Airlines canceled the flight at 9:30 p.m. They rescheduled it for 6 a.m. the next morning and provided the passengers with electronic vouchers for hotels. 

“I started panicking a little bit,” Metzger says. “I knew that by the time I got to the hotel, I wouldn’t have enough time to sleep and make it back to the airport by 4 a.m.” At the United desk, he expressed his concerns and requested to be moved to a later flight, but the agent did not understand his needs. He then changed his flight using the airline’s app. 

To complicate matters further, the shuttles to the hotel were not wheelchair accessible. Thankfully, Metzger discovered an accessible transportation station where a man offered to call an accessible vehicle for him. Metzger was forced to pay $80 each way for an accessible ride to and from the hotel, while other travelers got to the hotel at no cost. 

In a final cruel twist, the only accessible room available at the hotel did not have hot water. “At that point, I just took the room because I was exhausted,” he recalls. 

The next morning when he arrived at O’Hare International Airport, he discovered that the new flight and the 6 a.m. flight were both delayed. He switched back to his original flight. However, when he reached the gate and proceeded down the jetway to board the plane, the pilot informed him that there needed to be a change of flight attendants, resulting in another delay. Metzger ended up waiting in the cold jetway until the flight attendants arrived. 

Broken Promises and Disingenuous Airlines 

Tamara Blackwell 

Tamara Blackwell flew United Airlines to South Dakota in January 2025 to attend Ski for Life. Blackwell, Ms. Wheelchair America 2025, is a power wheelchair user due to limb-girdle muscular dystrophy and is also visually impaired with no central vision.  

Having checked her power chair, she waited out multiple gate changes and weather delays in an airport transport chair, only to end up with no aisle chair or staff to assist when boarding finally began. When assistance finally arrived with the aisle chair, the plane was nearly full. 

“The most humiliating part was going down the aisle in a full plane,” she recalls. “I was brushing up against people, trying not to touch anyone, and everyone was watching me.” 

To add insult to injury, when she landed in Rapid City, her power chair had been dismantled. Her husband tried to put it back together. “When I transferred into the chair, I turned it on and received an error message,” she says. The chair — which is typically easy to push when disengaged — would barely move. “Finally, my husband had to literally take a running start to push me through the airport.” 

They reported the damage at the United counter, and the airline promised a loaner chair by the next day. But she never received a loaner even after United confirmed her chair would need to be replaced.  

On her return flight, aisle assistance was again unavailable, making her the focus of unwanted attention. “I was the spectacle of the entire crowd waiting in the jetway,” Blackwell says.  

After returning home, she had to cancel one event, couldn’t celebrate her birthday, and missed seeing her grandmother one last time before her death due to the damage United inflicted upon her wheelchair. 

For all her trouble, United offered Tamara a flight credit of $350, which she refused. “I offered to collaborate with United on accessibility — it would’ve been good PR for them. It’s a win-win for both United and the disabled community to work together. But they didn’t want to collaborate,” she says. 

Honeymoon From Hell 

Beth Martin 

In Oct. 2010, Beth Martin was newly married and headed from Norfolk, Virginia, to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, for her honeymoon. She explained to baggage and gate agents that her manual wheelchair did not fold, and placed a sign on the chair on how to handle it properly. 

After a layover in Houston, Martin boarded a smaller plane to Cabo. Upon arrival at Cabo, she transferred from her seat to the floor — she chose not to use an aisle chair after almost being dropped once — and crawled to the front of the aircraft. She went down the steps to the tarmac, step by step, on her bottom, only to reach the expectant pilot. “I am so sorry, but your wheelchair did not make it on the plane,” he told her. She began to cry. 

Her husband looked at the pilot and said, “At least you made her cry first.” 

She transferred into an aisle chair and her husband pushed her into the airport. After sitting for some time, airport staff brought a bariatric wheelchair, saying, “This is all we have.” 

“The wheelchair was so wide I couldn’t even reach the pushrims to push myself, which really irritated the crap out of me,” Martin says. The chair was too large to fit in a taxi, forcing them to hire a transport van to reach their destination. On top of that, for the first 24 hours of her honeymoon, Martin was confined to her room since the chair was too wide to fit through the doors.  

Although she received her wheelchair the following day, Martin never received an explanation or any compensation. 

50 States, 50 Problems 

Kelley Simoneaux 

Kelley Simoneaux, a T12 paraplegic based in the Washington, D.C., area, wanted to visit all 50 states by her 40th birthday. She accomplished her goal, but not without significant difficulties.  

In June 2024, Sun Country Airlines damaged her wheelchair on a flight home from Alaska. “I knew my whole wheelchair would have to be replaced because they damaged the frame,” she says. Simoneaux reported the damage at the airport and spoke to the on-site complaint resolution officer. “I followed every single step to a ‘T,’” she says. 

Global Repair Group, which contracts with airlines to manage damaged mobility aids, told her she had to sign a destruction policy for them to replace her damaged wheelchair. “I requested to see the destruction policy. As a lawyer, I want to know what I am signing.”  

Simoneaux felt that her new wheelchair was being held hostage, so she agreed to comply with the destruction policy. Still, nine months later, she still doesn’t have a new wheelchair and still hasn’t seen the policy. 

Simoneaux’s travel woes continued on her return from Montana — the 50th state in her journey. She and her family missed their connecting flight because of a long wait for an aisle chair during a layover in Denver. Once again, she consulted the complaint resolution officer, who confirmed that United Airlines would refund their tickets. Acting on this assurance, she booked an early-morning flight on Frontier Airlines for $2,000.  

United provided a hotel voucher, but the bus driver refused her service, saying the bus didn’t have a lift or space for her chair. “When the driver went to load bags, I told my husband to pick me up and throw me in the bus,” she says. The wheelchair fit on her lap, yet the hotel had no accessible room.  

Simoneaux and her family made it home for her 40th birthday party. However, the corporate office at United Airlines reversed the decision to refund her family’s tickets. “I made decisions based on United’s assurances, and I take people at their word,” she says. “I don’t expect a business to lie to me.” 

Abandoned by the Airlines 

Nicole Roy 

In April 2024, Nicole Roy was returning from a work conference in Las Vegas and had a layover in Chicago. After the wheelchair attendants assisted her off the plane, they informed her that her next flight to Michigan was delayed and the gate had changed.  

Roy went to use the restroom before boarding, and the attendants assured her they would meet her at the gate. While in the restroom, she received a text notification that United Airlines had cancelled her flight. 

She proceeded to the gate, but the attendants weren’t there. When she finally found a United employee, he told her she needed to go to the kiosk at the United desk or call customer service since the airline had cut back on in-person customer service.  

At the kiosk, she discovered that the next available flight was in three days. “I panicked,” Roy says. “I considered renting a car, but no rental companies had hand controls.” 

She spent an hour and a half on hold with customer service before being disconnected. Desperate, Roy called her boss for emergency travel help. Fortunately, her company rebooked her on an American Airlines flight. “When you tell someone that you’ll meet them at the next gate, you don’t abandon them,” she says.  

After filing complaints with United and the Department of Transportation, she received a concerning email from an “Executive Solutions Manager” at United, that included this information: “[The wheelchair attendants] noted that you left the gate area and made your way to the B concourse, stopping at a restroom and a Hudson News [in-airport store]. Subsequently flight 5603 was cancelled and while they indicated you ended up at the B16 gate and were using your phone, they did not show any communications with any UA/UGE employees.”  

“United staff knew exactly where I was but didn’t assist me as I had requested. It also creeps me out that they tracked my every move in the airport,” she says.  

While United acknowledged a failure in customer service, they could not confirm any violations of disability laws. Roy says, “I haven’t traveled since this happened. And I’m not sure I want to.” 

‘Treated Like Garbage’ 

Jens Lund 

When Jens Lund arrived at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport for a layover, his power chair had been visibly damaged by being placed on its side and mishandled. He transferred into it anyway and followed the woman from airline assistance to a seating area marked for people with disabilities, where she informed him that he needed to get out of his chair so she could take it. Lund has spinal muscle atrophy type 2, and he explained that he could not sit in just any seat. “There was no way in hell I was going to give her my wheelchair,” he says.  

Lund has seen the same thing happen too many times during his frequent travels as a partner with No Limits Accessibility, a Danish provider of accessibility consulting. “I have witnessed with my own two eyes how they treat my chair. My chair isn’t even treated like a piece of luggage. It’s treated like garbage,” he says. 

He believes that the baggage handlers need to have proper education on how to handle a wheelchair. He adds, “It’s elementary. If they are moving mobility aids, then handle them with a little respect.”