Paralyzed man says American Airlines chose not to load his wheelchair on flight home from Hawaii

A paralyzed man was left without his wheelchair when he returned home from his vacation in Hawaii — because American Airlines didn’t load it on the plane, he claimed.Sam Shivers, who is paralyzed from the waist down, checked in his wheelchair at the American Airlines gate in Hawaii at the end of his one-week vacation with his wife last month, KGUN 9 reported.But when the Tuscon couple landed in Phoenix, the wheelchair was nowhere to be found.“At that point, I almost felt like throwing up,” Shivers told the outlet.“I was like, ‘Oh my god, what am I going to do?'”“Without my wheelchair, it’s like I don’t have any legs, I can’t get around,” he said.Instead, American Airlines somehow sent the wheelchair to Los Angeles.Shivers and his wife don’t think it’s a mistake.

They noticed another wheelchair and stroller weren’t loaded onto the plane either.Shivers said he would have happily traded his luggage for the wheelchair — had he been told space was an issue.Once in Phoenix, the couple had to figure out how to get home.

They eventually decided to use the airport’s transport chair to get Shivers into his van to head home, where he had a second wheelchair.American Airlines returned the wheelchair to the couple’s home about eight hours later.The airline didn’t immediately return a request for comment.Shivers says he’s filed a complaint with the Department of Transportation.Last October, the airline was fined $50 million by the US government which said it “mishandled thousands of wheelchairs by damaging them or delaying their return,” among other violations in the airline’s treatment of passengers with disabilities.In 2023, American Airlines allegedly lost a disabled Missouri man’s prosthetic leg worth $26,000 — and refused to pay him back....