When he returned home from his Hawaiian holiday, the paralyzed man was left without a wheelchair. He insisted that American Airlines did not load it onto the plane.
Paralyzed from his waist, Sam Shivers checked his wheelchair at the end of a week-long holiday with his wife last month at the end of his wheelchair at the gates of American Airlines in Hawaii. Kgun 9 reported.
However, when the Tuscon couple landed in Phoenix, no wheelchairs were found anywhere.
“At that point, I almost felt like I was throwing,” Shivers told the outlet. “I was like, 'What a god, what are you going to do?'
“Without a wheelchair, you can't avoid it because you don't have enough legs,” he said.
Instead, American Airlines somehow sent a wheelchair to Los Angeles.
Shivers and his wife don't think it's wrong.
They noticed that another wheelchair and a stroller weren't even loaded onto the plane. Shivers said he would be happy to replace his luggage with a wheelchair – if he was told the space was an issue.
Once they arrived in Phoenix, the couple had to find a way to get home. They eventually decide to use the airport transport chair and tremble into his van and go home, where they had a second wheelchair.
American Airlines returned the wheelchairs to the couple's home about eight hours later.
In a statement, the airline told the post it was considering the issue and apologised for shaking his experience.
“We know how important it is to support the independence of customers using wheelchairs and support devices,” the spokesman said.
Shivers says he filed a complaint with the Department of Transportation.
Last October, the airline was fined $50 million by the US government, saying that “amended thousands of wheelchairs by damaging thousands of wheelchairs by delaying returns,” among airline violations in handling disabled passengers.
In 2023, American Airlines reportedly lost a disability Missouri prosthetic leg worth $26,000.
