Summer Travel: The Air Carrier Access Act and What It Means for People with Disabilities

Summer is upon us.  Some people are traveling to the coast to beat the heat, and others are visiting the tropics to soak up the sun and seek adventure and romance.  Still others are traveling to visit family or friends, or to one of the summer conventions that so many of the associations and consumer groups host for people with disabilities and the teachers, counselors, and other professionals who work on disability-related issues. Maybe your job or a job interview will take you out of town.  Or maybe this summer's considerably lower air fares are so tempting, you simply can't resist the urge to book a flight!  If your summer plans include air travel, you may want to acquaint yourself with the many ways the Air Carrier Access Act affects air travel for people with disabilities.

The Air Carrier Access Act became the law of the land in 1986, four years before the Americans with Disabilities Act made it through the legislative process and into law.  The Air Carrier Access Act protects your rights as an air carrier passenger with a disability while you are booking reservations, buying tickets, waiting for a plane, boarding, flying, leaving the plane, and picking up your bags.  The Americans with Disabilities Act protects your rights and guarantees your access while you are in the airport.  Regulations for the Air Carrier Access Act were issued by the U. S. Department of Transportation (DOT) in 1990, and since then, the regs have been amended several times.  The "Wendell H. Ford Aviation Investment and Reform Act for the 21st Century," known as "Air 21," which was passed in 2000,  applies many provisions of the Air Carrier Access Act to foreign carriers.  And, newly revised regulations for the Air Carrier Access Act became final just a few weeks ago, on May, 2009.  (For an informative discussion of newly applicable rules for foreign carriers, visit http://www.miusa.org/newsitems/acaaregs.)

For a helpful overview of your rights as a consumer with disabilities under the Air Carrier Access Act, including how to file a complaint, visit:  http://airconsumer.dot.gov/rules/rules.htm

The Air Carrier Access Act is a mandate for air carriers that prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities, on the basis of disability; the law affects all domestic air carriers and foreign carriers that provide flights to and from all airport facilities within the United States and its territories, possessions, and commonwealths.  The law states that an air carrier cannot refuse to transport a person with a disability because of his or her disability, as long as that person is qualified to travel on that airline.  You are qualified if you are a ticket holder. 

The regulations are very specific.  They say things like:  An air carrier cannot refuse to transport a ticket holder with a disability because airline personnel believe that a person's appearance or involuntary behavior may offend, annoy or inconvenience others.  An air carrier cannot limit the number of people with disabilities on a flight, but airlines can require groups of 10 or more people with disabilities who will be traveling together as a group to let them know in advance.

There are several circumstances under which an air carrier can require a person with a disability with certain specific needs to notify the airline in advance, and to check in an hour earlier than what is recommended for passengers without these requirements.  If you use a battery-powered wheelchair and you will be traveling on a plane with fewer than 60 seats, or if you will be requiring a respirator hook-up, or if you will need onboard medical oxygen, the regulations specifically allow airlines to require you to notify them 48 hours in advance of your flight if it is a domestic flight, and 72 hours in advance of an overseas flight.  Visit http://aeromedic.com/news/uncategorized/air-carrier-access-act-13-2009/ for an informative discussion of newly released rules regarding traveling with oxygen concentrators.

In addition, the airline may legally require you to check in an hour earlier than check-in time for non-disabled passengers.  There are specific rules for packaging of wheelchair batteries, and airlines may require some people with disabilities to travel with a so-called "safety assistant," more commonly known as a personal care attendant (PCA).  A person who is traveling on a stretcher or in an incubator may be required to travel with a safety assistant, and if a person's mental or cognitive disability is so severe that he or she cannot comprehend safety instructions, then the airline can require that person to travel with a safety assistant, as well.  In addition, if a person's mobility impairment is so severe that he or she cannot assist in an evacuation, or if his or her hearing or vision impairment is so severe that he or she cannot communicate in order to receive a safety briefing, then the airline can also require the passenger to travel with a safety assistant.

If the airline believes that you need to travel with a safety assistant, and you disagree, then the airline may require you to utilize such an assistant, but the air carrier cannot require you to pay for the assistant's air travel.

Passengers who use an aisle chair to access the aircraft and who cannot transfer over a fixed aisle armrest must be assigned a seat in a row with a movable aisle armrest.  And, there is a requirement for planes with 30 or more passenger seats to equip 50 percent of the aisle seats with moveable armrests.

Passengers who are traveling with a personal care attendant, a reader/assistant, or an interpreter who will be performing disability-related functions during the flight must be allowed to sit next to their assistant.  Passengers who are traveling with service animals can request a seating assignment that they believe will reasonably accommodate the needs of their service animal, and the airline must honor that request when possible. Passengers with a fused or immobilized leg must be assigned a seat that provides greater legroom, such as in the bulkhead.  Passengers who are seated in an emergency exit row must be able to perform the functions outlined, by the airline, for people sitting in that row.  If you cannot perform those functions, or the airline believes that you cannot do so, then you will be required to move to another seat.

If you are traveling on a small plane with fewer than 19 seats, the air carrier is not required to provide you with boarding assistance.  If, however, you need assistance with boarding, and you are traveling on a plane with more than 19 seats, the airline is required to use a mechanical lift or other device to provide you with boarding assistance.

Once you're aboard the plane, these are the services with which airline personnel are required to assist you:  Opening food packages; assisting with the use of an on-board wheelchair to get to the lavatory; and  retrieving carry on items.

Air carriers must accept manual wheelchairs as carry-on  baggage.  And if a wheelchair needs to be stowed as cargo, the airline needs to assure its owner that it will be stowed upright.  A wheelchair user must be given the option to carry removable wheelchair parts in a bag, with him or her.  Be aware that baggage liability limits do not apply to an air carrier's liability for loss, damage, or delay of a wheelchair or other mobility aid.  Compensation for loss or damage to such devices is based on the original purchase price of the device.  Compensation of loss or damage that occurs on international flights, however, is based on the Warsaw/Montreal conventions, which do impose limits on the amount of compensation.

Aircraft with 100 or more passenger seats must make priority space available in the cabin to store at least one, or more folding wheelchairs.  Aircraft with more than one aisle must have at least one accessible lavatory. (but be aware that the concept of "accessible" as it applies to accommodations on planes may well have a meaning that is far different from what one usually thinks of as "accessible."  The requirements for accessible lavatories, which apply only to planes with more than one aisle, ordered by domestic airlines after April 5, 1990, or delivered after April 5, 1992, and foreign-ordered after May 13, 2009, or delivered after May 13, 2010, are that the lavatory must permit a person with a disability to enter, maneuver within to use all the fixtures, and to exit.)  A plane with 60 or more passenger seats must make an operable on-board wheelchair available to passengers for visiting the accessible lavatory.

 The Air Carrier Access Act states that people with disabilities who are traveling with service animals must be allowed to sit with them in the cabin of the aircraft.  The definition of a service animal in this act is somewhat broader than the definition under the Americans with Disabilities Act.  According to the Air Carrier Access Act, service animals can include guide dogs, signal dogs, psychiatric service animals, and emotional support animals.  In certain circumstances, outlined in the regs., airline personnel may ask questions to determine whether or not you may claim your companion animal as a service animal for purposes of bringing it onboard the plane with you. For example, you may be asked to show an identification card or other documentation for your guide dog or other service animal.  You may be asked how the animal has been trained to assist you with your disability, or what specific tasks the animal performs to assist you.  If a ticketed passenger has an  obvious disability, and The service animal is wearing a harness, tags, vest, or backpack; or The passenger provides identification cards or other written documentation; or credible verbal assurances that the animal is a service animal, Then the airline should permit the animal to accompany him or her on the plane.

For psychiatric or emotional support animals, airline personnel may require that very specific documentation be provided 48 hours in advance of a flight.  Documentation must be current, i.e., not more than one year old.  It must be on letterhead from a licensed mental-health professional.  The document must state that the person has a mental or emotional disability which is recognized in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) IV, and state that the   animal provides an accommodation that is required during the flight or when the passenger reaches his or her destination.  The documentation also needs to state that the professional who is signing it and on whose letterhead it appears is treating the person who claims to need the service animal, as well as the date of his or her professional license, and the state and/or jurisdiction in which it was issued.  The document does not need to state the person's diagnosis.

At this time, unusual animals, like pigs, miniature horses, and monkeys, are allowed to travel as service animals.  However, the airline may take into account the animal's size, weight, and whether the animal would pose a direct threat to the health or safety of others or cause a significant disruption to cabin services when deciding whether or not to transport it in the cabin, even if the animal meets all the other requirements to qualify as a service animal.  And, if there are restrictions on the animal at the final destination, this too would be justification for denying the animal's transport.  Snakes, other reptiles, ferrets, rodents, and spiders will be denied boarding, because, the regs state, they may pose other safety and public health concerns.  Foreign carriers are currently required to transport only dogs as service animals. 

Just as is the case under the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Air Carrier Access Act requires service animals to be groomed and well behaved, and under the control of their owners at all times.  If a service animal barks, growls, jumps on people, or misbehaves in ways that indicate that the animal has not been trained to behave properly in public settings, poses a direct threat to the health and safety of others, or poses a significant risk of disruption in airline service, airline employees may prohibit it from boarding.

If other passengers claim to be allergic, afraid, or inconvenienced by your service animal, your rights as a person with a disability will take priority over their objections.  The airline will make whatever accommodations they can to assure that other passengers are comfortable.  (But, unlike the all too frequent situation with a taxicab driver who claims a sudden allergy to your dog, an airline pilot cannot leave you and your service dog standing on the curb!)  If a passenger with a severe animal allergy that rises to the level of a disability cannot travel in the same cabin as a service animal, a carrier may rebook one of the passengers on another flight.  Passengers who claim to have a severe animal allergy may be asked for documentation to substantiate the severity of the allergy.

Passengers who travel with service animals may ask for pre-boarding and request a seat in the bulkhead or the location that best meets their needs.  Be aware, however, that your choice of seating may not block an aisle or an area designated for evacuation.  If the airline cannot accommodate your seating request, then you will be given the opportunity to move to another seat within the class of service that you paid for, i.e., there is no requirement for an airline to move you from economy seating to first class in order to accommodate your needs as a passenger traveling with a service animal.

The airline is not required to ask another passenger seated in your row to give up his or her (limited amount of) leg room in order to accommodate your service animal, so try to convince your guide dog to resist the urge to take up more and more of the available space as the flight progresses.  An airline may try to find someone who is more willing to share his or her leg room with your service animal, and often, it's not too hard to find an animal lover who is more than happy to sit next to you and accommodate your dog's needs for sleeping (and spreading-out) room. An airline can voluntarily find you a seat in business or first class that will better accommodate the needs you have as  a passenger traveling with a service animal, but it is not required to do so, and now that airliners are so completely full for most flights, you shouldn't count on this pleasant bit of serendipity to occur.

There is no requirement for an airline to provide in-flight services of any kind to a service animal. Owners traveling with service animals must provide for their food, care, and supervision.

In air terminals, airlines must provide animal relief areas and escort services to and from these areas when requested.  Be aware, however, that airlines are not required to make any modifications for service animals or the passengers who travel with them that would constitute an undue burden or fundamentally alter their programs.

For purposes of making reservations and booking tickets, airlines must make information and services available to people who use text telephones, whether through TTY, voice relay or other more recently available technologies, e.g., texting via cell phones.  Air carriers must make TTY access available to users during the same hours that they make voice telephone services available, and carriers must list their TTY numbers in the same places they list their telephone numbers.  If an airline does not have a TTY, then it must list how a TTY user can make contact for purposes of making reservations, booking tickets or obtaining information, such as by voice-relay services.  In the terminal, captioning must be available at all times on all televisions and other audio-visual displays that are capable of displaying captions and located where any passenger can be expected to go.  Newer video displays and televisions must have high contrast captioning capability.  At gates, ticketing areas and customer service desks, information which is relayed verbally to passengers must also be transmitted to passengers who cannot hear at the same time it is communicated to others.  This is likely to be accomplished via written communication.  Airline personnel are not required to know or use American Sign Language.  Of course, this requirement would be applicable only to passengers who have self identified as having a hearing impairment.

On the plane, airline personnel need to communicate with passengers who are deaf and hard of hearing with effective communications so that these passengers have timely access to the information that is being provided to hearing passengers, such as about weather conditions, on-board services, connecting flights, and delays.  Airlines are not required to use interpreters.  Safety videos must have high-contrast captioning, and captioning must be made available in the languages which airline personnel use to communicate with hearing passengers.

At this time, there is no requirement that entertainment videos be captioned for people who are deaf or described for people who are blind and visually impaired.  There is consistent speculation among advocates, about a future Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM) that may, one day, require these accommodations.  

The office within the U. S. Department of Transportation which monitors and assures the air carriers' compliance with the Air Carrier Access Act is the Office of  the Assistant General Counsel for Aviation Enforcement and Proceedings.  This is the office where you should direct any complaints you may have about poor service with respect to your disability, or identifiable violations of the Air Carrier Access Act.  To Contact them, you can write the Assistant General Counsel for Aviation and Proceedings, 1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE, Washington, DC 20590, or Telephone 202.366.9342.  Visit http://www.dot.gov/ost/ogc/org/aviation/index.html -

According to Blane A. Workie, Deputy Assistant General Counsel, for Aviation Enforcement & Proceedings at the U.S. Department of Transportation, the Department is currently considering issuing several new Notices of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM), some of which may address changes in rules with respect to psychiatric and emotional support service animals, the accessibility of airport kiosks (None are currently accessible for people who cannot see the screen), the accessibility of airline web sites (All have very identifiable accessibility problems), captioning and described video requirements for on-board entertainment videos, and the use of seat strapping for wheelchairs on planes that do not have in-cabin compartments or closets for stowing wheelchairs.  Workie says that his office is committed to assuring air carrier compliance with the important  disability regulations of the Air Carrier Access Act.  He says that his office investigates complaints and fines air carriers when there is evidence of a pattern and practice of discrimination.  Airlines can be and have been penalized a maximum of $27,500 for each specific violation of an anti-discrimination rule.   He says that the Office will continue working with the airlines and with disability organizations to assure their shared goal of assuring accessibility to passengers with disabilities in air travel.

My research into the Air Carrier Access Act and its rules for air carriers and protections and requirements for travelers with disabilities was considerably assisted by my attendance at an online Webinar, "Understanding the Air Carrier Access Act for Flyers with Disabilities."  The seminar was sponsored by the Association for Airline Passenger Rights, http://www.flyfriendlyskies.com/  and the National Network of ADA Centers, http://www.adata.org/ on Thursday, June 25, 2009.  I am grateful to the presenters, who included:  Brandon M. Macsata, Executive Director, Association for Airline Passenger Rights; Kleo J. King, Senior Vice President of Accessibility Services, United Spinal Association; Jacquie Brennan, Project Director, DBTAC: Southwest ADA Center; and Blane A. Workie, Deputy Assistant General Counsel, Aviation Enforcement & Proceedings,  U.S. Department of Transportation.

It is an unfortunate fact of modern life that air travel has lost virtually all of the glamour many of us once associated with flying.  Airports are frantic places where getting through Security can be a real nightmare, decent food and courtesy seem to be in ever diminishing supply, flights are cancelled without notice or adequate explanation, and departure gates are likely to change  just about the time you arrive, huffing and puffing and trying to catch your breath, at the service desk.  Although the usually friendly, but sometimes not, airline employees don't really carry cattle prods as they herd us willy-nilly here and there, in and out, on and off-board, passengers can sometimes end up feeling like cattle, or is it sheep, at the mercy of weather and schedule changes and current events, and who knows what else...

It's best, I think, and others recommend, to continue, as far as one can, to make the best of the situations that can present themselves during an air travel experience.  (I'm sure your Mom told you, as did mine, that you can attract more flies with honey than with vinegar, and a smile or a kind word can work like a miracle when you hope to change an attitude or smooth out a tense situation.

But, our moms also told us, or they should have, that the squeaky wheel gets the grease.  Know the rights that the Air Carrier Access Act guarantees to you as a person with a disability.  Expect the airlines to accommodate you, and if they don't, or if they are reluctant to do so, insist they do.  I hope that the summer skies are friendly for you, that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) workers don't react with terror or annoyance to your service animal, that you don't have to wait long for wheelchair assistance, that all of your bags show up, right away, at the right baggage carrousel, and that everyone treats you with the courtesy and respect and accommodations that you deserve.

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Posted Jun 26 2009, 05:28 PM by PennyRdr