Airport Accessibility Observatory (AAO) Newsletter #002
In July 2021, IATA established its Mobility Aids Action Group and it wasn’t a subtle reason. Powered wheelchairs were being damaged during air travel at a scale that had become a reputational problem for the industry, a legal problem for airlines, and a practical crisis for the passengers whose mobility depended on equipment that arrived broken, or did not arrive at all.
Two years later, in February 2023, the group published guidance. Detailed, technically specific guidance covering pre-flight data exchange, battery handling for lithium-powered devices, ramp loading procedures, and cargo hold compatibility. Developed with disability organisations, manufacturers, airlines, airports, and ground handlers. A genuine cross-industry effort.
The guidance is advisory. Binding standards do not yet exist.
The Physical Problem
IATA’s own document states it directly: airport ramp designs are not built to transport mobility aids safely from the terminal to the aircraft. The transfer often happens manually. Cargo compartment doors on single-aisle regional aircraft — the workhorses of short-haul European flying — are physically incompatible with many current powered wheelchair designs. The chair cannot fit through the door in its standard configuration. Disassembly is required. Disassembly under time pressure, by staff who may not know that specific model, introduces damage risk at every step.
This is not a training failure, though training matters. It is a design incompatibility that has accumulated over decades as wheelchair technology advanced and aviation infrastructure did not.
The Information Gap
Passengers travelling with powered wheelchairs are required to notify their airline in advance. The notification includes dimensions, weight, and battery specifications. That information enters the airline’s reservation system, attached to a Special Service Request code.
In most cases, it does not reach the ramp team in usable form before the aircraft arrives.
The people physically handling the device at the ramp are ground handling contractors. Their contract with the airport is cost-based. Their briefing for a specific flight may or may not include details of the mobility aids being loaded. The data exists. The operational pathway to act on it, reliably, at scale, does not.
The Liability Gap
When a wheelchair is damaged, the airline is legally responsible under the Montreal Convention. The Convention caps compensation for checked items at approximately 1,288 Special Drawing Rights per kilogram unless a higher value was declared at check-in. Most passengers do not know to declare a higher value. A custom-configured powered wheelchair, built to specific clinical requirements, may cost tens of thousands of euros. The compensation available rarely reflects that.
The fragmentation of the handling chain compounds this. The airline is liable but did not do the handling. The ground handler did the handling but has no direct legal relationship with the passenger. Pursuing a claim requires navigating that structure, often from an unfamiliar city, without a functioning wheelchair.
Where the Standard-Setting Stands
The December 2024 joint IATA/ICAO/ACI Accessibility Symposium in Montreal committed to a global accessibility strategy for the 2025 ICAO Assembly. Three concrete areas from the MAAG analysis point directly to what binding standards would need to address: pre-flight data exchange between airlines and ground handlers covering mobility aid specifications; minimum ramp infrastructure requirements for mobility aid transfer; and cargo hold compatibility criteria for aircraft certification.
None of these exist as binding international requirements. The 2023 guidance document describes itself as a step “prior to developing into industry standards.” That is an honest description. It is also a gap that has measurable human consequences every day.
What AXLab Is Watching
Three signals from adjacent territory.
The US DOT publishes monthly mishandled wheelchair data under the Air Carrier Access Act. Equivalent European data is dispersed across national civil aviation authorities with no aggregated public record. The EU reporting gap is itself a policy problem.
Several airlines have introduced voluntary powered wheelchair handling protocols, including pre-boarding checks and dedicated staff training. The variance between carriers is large. Voluntary adoption means the protocol quality a passenger experiences depends on which airline they booked, not on a minimum standard.
ACI’s Accessibility Enhancement Accreditation criteria cover policies, infrastructure, and training. Ramp-level mobility aid handling sits at the intersection of airport and handler responsibility, an area where ACI accreditation currently has limited reach.
AXLab’s Airport Accessibility Observatory tracks how assistance systems function across airports and jurisdictions. This briefing draws on IATA Mobility Aids Action Group documentation, Montreal Convention liability analysis, and ACI accreditation data.