Imagine being excited about going on vacation. You purchase plane tickets, get on the plane, then arrive at your destination. You wait for your luggage, in this case, your motorized wheelchair, to come but it doesn’t. The vacation hasn’t even started but it’s already ruined.

23-year-old Xavi Santiago just wanted a nice vacation. But what she got was a missing $22,000 power wheelchair.

“This is not a lost bag. This is my mobility. These are like my legs.”

In her viral TikTok video, Santiago shared that she was traveling to Orlando, Florida from Los Angeles, California with her partner and their friends for a vacation at Disney World. Her flight, which was supposed to fly directly to Florida, was changed a week prior to departure and included a layover in Miami, Florida. 

They arrived in Orlando at around 6 p.m. and waited for her wheelchair to arrive. There, they discovered that it was not loaded onto their Orlando flight. 

“No one was explaining anything to me,” a dismayed Santiago shared. She added that the staff were not talking to her directly, but to her partner instead. “I know it’s a common feeling for a lot of disabled people – they think that because you have physical disabilities, that it means that you’re any less capable or any less competent. And I sure as hell am not either of those things,” she further shared.

Santiago said that in the interim, she was told she could borrow a manual wheelchair and they were told that her chair was on its way and would arrive with the 9 p.m. flight. 

It arrived at 1 a.m.

Santiago added that she was not allowed to pre-board their Miami flight, a courtesy given to people with mobility issues. There was also no attendant to assist her during the transfer. They had to go through the crowd to be able to reach their seats at the plane’s end.

This was not the first time that the airlines received a complaint like this. According to the Department of Transportation, from 2019 to 2022, American Airlines received a 108% rise in complaints from their customers who had disabilities.

The airlines offered a $300 flight credit to Santiago, which she refused. She said that she preferred not to fly with American Airlines again.

Not a good look for the carrier.