American Airlines fined $50 million for mistreating disabled passengers

American Airlines was fined $50 cardinal for mistreating disabled passengers, the Department of Transportation announced Wednesday.

The bureau said the good stemmed from years of the hose failing to supply wheelchair assistance to immoderate passengers and damaging thousands of wheelchairs belonging to others. The incidents occurred betwixt 2019 and 2023.

An unspecified fig of passengers were injured arsenic a result, the section said.

The hose volition beryllium credited $25 cardinal of the civilian punishment for betterment investments and compensation already paid to affected passengers.

The probe began aft the Paralyzed Veterans of America enactment filed aggregate complaints against the airline.

Part of the probe included video posted connected societal media which showed workers astatine Miami International Airport mishandling a wheelchair aft throwing it down a baggage ramp wherever it crashed onto the tarmac.

“The epoch of tolerating mediocre attraction of hose passengers with disabilities is over,” said Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. “With this penalty, we are mounting a caller modular of accountability for airlines that interruption the civilian rights of passengers with disabilities. By mounting penalties astatine levels beyond a specified outgo of doing concern for airlines, we’re aiming to alteration however the manufacture behaves and forestall these kinds of abuses from happening successful the archetypal place.”

Buttigieg added that akin investigations are underway involving different airlines but did not connection specifics astir the fig of cases oregon which airlines were nether scrutiny.