When Julie Reiskin took off from the Denver International Airport to Kansas City for a business meeting in October 2022, she did not know she was headed to disaster. She said she was greeted by a snapped wheelchair joystick at the end of her Southwest flight.

“I was stuck, the chair was broken,” she said. “Again, totally preventable damage, careless damage.”

Instead of going to the hotel after a day of painful travel with a push of her fingers, Reiskin said she could not even use the bathroom on her own without her chair. Airline employees have broken her chair in transit at least three times, she said.

Reiskin, a 59-year-old woman living in Denver, suffers from multiple sclerosis. She said the correct chair provides her with the core support and other features that are crucial to being able to live independently with minimal pain. Reiskin said a Southwest vendor gave her a “terrifying” replacement chair while her usual wheelchair was repaired. She was afraid she could be hurt falling out of the device.

“I still have nightmares about it,” she said.

A review of U.S. Department of Transportation data showed Reiskin is not alone. Airline employees mishandle wheelchairs and scooters thousands of times each year. About one wheelchair or scooter was damaged for every 100 wheelchairs and scooters brought on board in 2022, the last year with complete federal data.

DOT is considering rule changes that would “make it an automatic violation of the Department’s Air Carrier Access Act regulations for airlines to mishandle a passenger’s wheelchair.” It would also “enhance” training requirements for airline employees.

U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., proposed additional protections for wheelchair passengers in 2023, but the legislation has not gained much traction. The bill would require DOT to set “minimum” accessibility standards for accessibility, including the storage of assistive devices like wheelchairs. DOT would have the standing to sue airlines if they violated these standards. Airlines would have five years to comply.

Dan Landson, a spokesperson for Southwest Airlines, wrote in an email that the airline created a Customer Accessibility Advisory Committee to learn from members of the disabled community to better handle devices like wheelchairs.

“Our Teams reached out to the Customer and expressed our apologies for the inconvenience and ensured them that we are always working to better improve the experience for all Customers, including our Customers with mobility devices,” Landson wrote.

Reiskin said her chair was repaired in about a day but that it was a “miracle.” She wrote in an email that she does not remember a response from Southwest if she got one, but that if there was one it was “really poor.”

“The whole attitude from the time this was discovered in the airport was that this happens all of the time and they will just pay for the repairs so no big deal,” Reiskin wrote.

Reiskin tweeted there was “no way to move, use a restroom, (or) get water” at the time of the incident.

DOT recommends travelers with an assistive mobility device include “clear” written instructions for how to care for their equipment, alert an airline as soon as possible that they have an assistive device and get to the airport early.

Reiskin said she followed the DOT recommendations. She regularly includes laminated instructions for safe storage of the wheelchair, gets to the gate at least two hours early and tries to talk to as many people as possible about how to care for her wheelchair.

“I do everything humanly possible to try and make it easier and I still have problems,” she said.

She said airline employees broke her wheelchair to the point it was “inoperable” on three different occasions. Reiskin said it usually takes weeks for a wheelchair to be repaired, and that’s in a “best case scenario” where insurance or the airline does not fight you on the necessity of the claim.

In that time, Reiskin said there can be widespread problems that stem from a damaged wheelchair. A person with a disability could lose their job, a single parent could lose custody of their children because they cannot care for them or their physical condition could worsen because of the increased time in bed.

“It just sets off this whole cascade of nightmares,” Reiskin said.

According to the Transportation Department, airlines “must fully compensate passengers for loss or damage” of wheelchairs or other assistive devices. Reiskin said Southwest paid for the damage. She said that still fell short of her true goal.

“I want to know that this isn’t going to keep happening,” she said.

Reiskin advocates for disability rights as the co-executive director of the Colorado Cross Disability Coalition. She wants lawmakers and regulators to pay more attention to this issue. She said other members of her community shrink their world because they are afraid to fly and gamble with their wheelchair. They see family and friends less frequently, give up job opportunities and miss life events because they cannot take the risk of a damaged wheelchair.

Airlines are required to pay for the cost of the “original purchase of the device,” according to federal regulations. It is not clear if airlines are responsible for any emotional damages or to fix the conditions that broke the wheelchair.

Reiskin wants that to change through hefty fines and robust monitoring through deputized passengers to report any issues.

“If they would prioritize it, this could stop,” she said.