14 CFR Part 382 Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Disability in Air Travel (Air Carrier Access Act): Preamble and Section-by-Section Analysis (with amendments issued through July 2010)

382.35 May carriers require passengers with a disability to sign waivers or releases? Carriers must not impose requirements or restrictions on passengers with a disability that they do not impose on other passengers, except where this regulation explicitly permits the carrier to do so (e.g., advance notice for certain services). We hope that many of the practices specifically banned in this section are only of historical interest (e.g., making passengers with disabilities sit on blankets or restricting such passengers to so-called “corrals” in terminals), but we believe they are still useful examples of the sort of discriminatory treatment that is unacceptable in the context of a nondiscrimination statute. Waivers of liability or releases either for passengers themselves or for loss or damage of wheelchairs and other assistive devices are among the forbidden practices, although as we have stated in the past, carriers are free to note pre-existing damage to an assistive device to the same extent that carriers do this with respect to other checked baggage.