Airlines Must Still Report Disability Complaints to DOT—Renewed
Published Date: 11/28/2025
Notice
Summary
The Department of Transportation wants to keep collecting yearly reports from airlines about disability-related complaints to make sure air travel stays fair for everyone. Airlines need to keep sharing this info, and the public can comment on this plan until January 27, 2026. This renewal won’t cost extra but helps keep disability rights in the skies strong and clear.
Analyzed Economic Effects
3 provisions identified: 1 benefits, 2 costs, 0 mixed.
Airlines must record and report disability complaints
If an airline operates passenger service with at least one aircraft that has more than 60 seats, it must record and categorize disability-related complaints, prepare an annual summary, and submit that report to DOT by the last Monday in January each year. Carriers must keep complaint correspondence and records of actions taken for three years; the requirement to submit 2025 reports via DOT is due January 26, 2026.
DOT’s estimated time burden for carriers
DOT estimates 170 reporting carriers produced 49,082 disability-related complaints in Calendar Year 2023. DOT estimates it takes 0.25 hours to record and categorize each complaint (total 12,270.5 hours), 0.5 hours per carrier to prepare the annual report (total 85 hours), and 0.083 hours per complaint to retain records (total 4,090.17 hours).
DOT moves reporting to the ACERS web portal
DOT will accept annual disability reports through its web-based ACERS portal beginning with reports for calendar year 2025, with those reports due January 26, 2026. ACERS lets a carrier auto-populate all fields with “0” if it received zero complaints and lets users save progress; carriers must register for an ACERS account before filing.
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