Southwest Airlines dismantled basketball players' wheelchairs, leaving them stranded for hours as they tried to reassemble them

• A disabled basketball team say they had long delays and damaged wheelchairs on a Southwest Airlines flight.
• Despite prior communication with the airline, their chairs were dismantled, causing chaos on arrival.
• The incident adds to ongoing complaints about US airlines' mistreatment of wheelchairs.

Members of a disabled basketball team were left with "chaos" and hours of delay after Southwest Airlines dismantled dozens of their wheelchairs on a recent flight.

Athletes traveling to the National Wheelchair Basketball Championship said they landed at Richmond International Airport, Virginia, last Wednesday to find a mass of chair parts, with little organization in getting them reassembled.

Some of the chairs were damaged, they said.

The pilot and a stewardess were "just kind of getting off the plane like, 'all right, whose wheel is this?'" Myranda Shields, who manages the team's social media, told BI.

To make matters worse, family members who tried to help were told they'd be breaking airport protocol, and that police would be called out, Shields said.

"It makes us feel terrible."

Wheelchair basketball teams typically travel with two chairs each —their sporting ones and their everyday ones, Shields told BI.

So when the Ability 360 Phoenix Wheelchair Suns and two other teams flew to Richmond, it meant fitting around 50-60 chairs, along with all the luggage, on board.

It is not uncommon for airlines to disassemble wheelchairs on flights, but according to the Department of Transportation, they are required to return them in good condition and "in a timely manner."

The teams had asked the airline not to take the wheels off their chairs, but staff assured them they would be properly reassembled, Shields said.

But Brigitte McIntee, the mother of one of the players, said on arrival there were no Southwest staff at the terminal to help organize the mass of chair parts, none of which had been tagged.

Family members had to take charge, matching dozens of wheels to different frames and reassembling them, she said.

It "was just complete chaos," despite the attempts of the pilot and a stewardess to help out, Shields told BI.

As a result, the teams were stranded on the plane for two hours, and didn't leave the airport until around 11 p.m., four hours after landing, she said.

In a statement to BI, Southwest Airlines said that there had been a delay in its staff reassembling the chairs, and that it had reviewed the situation and was addressing it. It also said it had been trying to fit the wheelchairs onto one of its smallest aircraft.

"We apologize any time we don't meet customer expectations and have a long history of caring for our customers," it said.

The airline told CBS 6 that there had been a breakdown in communication between its staff.

Addressing a major shortfall

Athletes are calling on airlines to address chronic problems in how they handle wheelchairs.

If a long wait on a plane is inconvenient for an able-bodied person, it's potentially disastrous for someone with disabilities, who may not be able to access bathrooms as easily, McIntee told BI.

McIntee, who is able-bodied, said she got up from her seat and started moving the wheels and chairs down the sky bridge herself — but was soon warned that this was against airport protocol.

She and her husband decided to carry on anyway, believing that this was the only way the players were going to get off the plane.

But an employee then threatened to call the police, McIntee said.

Shields added: "There was one Southwest employee and he was just standing at the top of the ramp saying, you can't go up and down the ramp."

"But the pilot had told us, yes, that's fine," she said. "Obviously, it's an extreme circumstance. It's not just us running around on the jetway having fun," she added.

Shields posted a video on Instagram.

Player Justin Walker told BI that it also felt like the airline's announcements about the situation were trying to blame the disabled passengers for the hold-up for other passengers.

"We already feel like we're an inconvenience," he said. "We already were getting looked at and stared at."

He said the situation made the players "feel terrible."

In the end, six chairs were damaged, he added.

"To put this in perspective, our everyday chairs are between $5,000 to $8,000," Walker said. "My sports chair is between $8,000 and $12,000."

"Our wheelchairs are our legs."

Events like the NWBA championship require months of coordination.

Conscious that such a large number of chairs would be challenging to stow, the team had been in contact with Southwest Airlines weeks in advance, Shields and Walker said.

"This is not our first rodeo," Walker added. "We try to help, we try to inform the TSA, we try to inform Southwest because we know that it's an inconvenience."

Troy Bell, the airport's public information manager, told BI that it had coordinated planning meetings between numerous other bodies to help make the event run smoothly. This had earned praise from Sportable, a co-host of the championships, he said.

McIntee said she has no prior complaints about Southwest.

But industry-wide, the players said they feel that much needs to improve. Data shows that US airlines damage thousands of wheelchairs a year.

Countless stories tell of broken and mislaid equipment, and stranded passengers.

Walker also said that airlines need to stop treating the loss of wheelchairs as equivalent to a mere luggage issue.

"Our wheelchairs are our legs — they are our lives," he said. "This is our second opportunity at something that we thought was lost. This is not a Louis Vuitton bag, you know what I'm saying?"

"This is the device that allows me freedom," he added. "That's the issue."