After experiencing another mobility equipment issue with an airline, Abby Lee Miller is calling for the company to "do better."
The "Dance Moms" personality, 61, told Page Six's "Virtual Reali-Tea" podcast in an Oct. 22 interview that her wheelchair arrived damaged after a recent flight from Mexico to Texas. In the interview, in which she promoted her new competition series with Cathy Nesbitt-Stein, "Abby vs. Cathy: Hit the 8," Miller was sitting in a motorized wheelchair that had airline tags.
"When you bring somebody's chair up at 2 o'clock on the morning in pieces and lay it there, how did they think I was going to get home? I had to go home with a push chair," she told cohosts Evan Real and Danny Murphy. "The guys that handled the luggage
downstairs had to push me up into a van."
"That was awful. Absolutely awful," she added. "It was the Dallas guys that did it."
The reality TV star also pointed out that the airline was fined $50 million by the U.S. Department of Transportation in 2024, for, as the agency announced at the time, "numerous serious violations of the laws protecting airline passengers with disabilities between 2019 and 2023."
USA TODAY has reached out to American Airlines for comment.
After becoming temporarily paralyzed from the neck down and undergoing emergency spinal surgery in 2018, Miller was diagnosed with Burkitt lymphoma. A form of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, it is a rare and aggressive cancer that typically begins in the lymph nodes.
Now cancer-free, Lee has said she underwent 10 rounds of chemotherapy, spinal taps and another spine surgery, among other treatments.
This isn't Miller's first complaint against American Airlines. In 2019, she allegedly fell to the floor after airline employees unsuccessfully transferred her to her own wheelchair – an incident that led to her suing the airline and Pittsburgh International Airport in 2021.
Abby Lee Miller details 'horrific' experience seeing staff 'destroy a wheelchair'
Miller followed up with an Instagram post on Oct. 22 that included 16 photos and videos of her flying experience, including airport employees handling her wheelchair as she sat on the plane. She clarified in the caption that she was offered a replacement wheelchair the next day by Global Repair Group.
In a video filmed as she was wheeled through the airport, Miller explained that she saw the employees transporting the chair up and down between the airport and the tarmac via a mechanized lift multiple times. She alleged there was "this whole argument" about disassembling the battery, which she asked them not to do. Per TSA regulations, lithium ion batteries in wheelchairs must be placed in carry-on luggage.
In a separate video, she alleged that an employee acknowledged Miller was correct about the type of battery in her equipment being safe for check-in.
"I watched them destroy a wheelchair," Miller said. "Absolutely horrific."
"This isn’t the first time something has happened to my power wheelchair and it certainly won’t be the last. However, most of the airline employees listen to what I’m telling them," she wrote in the caption. "I even say, 'Get your phone out; videotape what I'm doing so when you get downstairs out onto the tarmac, you won’t forget' ... and it usually works out very well! This situation was ridiculous!"
How common is wheelchair damage on flights?
U.S. airlines showed significant improvement in 2025 compared with 2024 in terms of wheelchair damage rates. According to the Department of Transportation, the 10 largest U.S. airlines and their subsidiaries carried 907,259 wheelchairs and other mobility devices in 2025, and the DOT received 9,910 reports of mishandling – a rate of 1.09%. For comparison, carriers mishandled 1.26% of the mobility devices they transported in 2024.
However, disability advocates have told USA TODAY that the only acceptable number of wheelchair damage reports is zero. Maria Town, president and CEO of the American Association of People with Disabilities, told USA TODAY in May that her mobility scooter arrived at her destination broken, and it was "not the first time my scooter has been broken by an airline, and it won't be the last."
She said that though she was provided with a loaner, people who fly outside of business hours are not so lucky.
"A huge issue with durable medical equipment providers is that they’re really only open between 9 to 5. If you need a device before 9 a.m. or after 5 p.m., it’s really hard to find one," she said.
After new federal regulation was implemented in June, airlines in the U.S. are now required to provide "hands-on training" to employees and contractors who assist disabled passengers or handle their mobility devices.
Contributing: Zach Wichter
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Abby Lee Miller reveals 'awful' flight experience left wheelchair in 'pieces'
