All airlines Asia Pacific
Air Vanuatu
carried free.
- Advance notice
- Not published
- Powered wheelchair
- Not published
- Lithium, battery installed
- Not published
- Cost to carry
- Free
Who to contact
Transcribed from the airline’s own pages, exactly as it labels them.
- PhoneVanuatu — Contact Centre (bookings and assistance requests)See Contact Us page for opening hours
- PhonePort Vila Sales Office — Head Office, BladiniereMon–Fri 08:00–16:00; Sat and public holidays 08:00–11:30; Sun closed
- PhoneSanto Sales Office — Main Street, LuganvilleMon–Fri 08:00–16:00; Sat and public holidays 08:00–11:30; Sun closed
- PhoneTanna Sales Office — Tafea Coop Building, LenakelMon–Fri 08:00–16:00; Sat and public holidays 08:00–11:30; Sun closed
- EmailReservations / new flight bookings
- EmailCustomer service team (general — not a disability desk)
- Online form
- Online form
No dedicated disability or accessibility phone line, email address, TTY/relay or online assistance form is published. Requests go through your Air Vanuatu sales consultant, your travel agent or the contact centre on +678 23838; the general customer-service mailbox is customercare@airvanuatu.vu and reservations is reservation@airvanuatu.vu (both are Cloudflare-obfuscated in the page source). Airport ticketing desks at Port Vila, Santo and Tanna are listed with hours but no phone numbers.
Read it from the source
3 of the unanswered fields below share one explanation: Not published — no watt-hour figure of any kind appears anywhere on airvanuatu.com. For dangerous-goods questions the airline sends travellers to the Australian regulator's tool at www.dangerousgoodsapp.casa.gov.au instead of publishing its own limits. ICAO/IATA default applies — see global rules. The rest carry their own.
Powered wheelchairs & batteries
The part that goes wrong. Battery chemistry and watt-hours decide whether your chair flies, and the rules differ depending on whether the battery can be removed.
Not published, and the general rules leave a power chair nowhere to go. The Special Assistance page covers wheelchair assistance, canes, crutches and walking frames but never mentions a powered chair or scooter; it bars a passenger's own chair from the cabin; and the checked-baggage rules list "Personal electronic equipment" among items that "must NOT be included in your Checked Baggage". Air Vanuatu never resolves that contradiction — treat it as an unanswered question, not a prohibition, and call before booking.
Special Assistance (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29 Before You Fly — dangerous goods, security information and ways to book (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29
Not published — neither the Special Assistance page nor the dangerous-goods section mentions lithium-powered mobility aids.
Before You Fly — dangerous goods, security information and ways to book (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29
Before You Fly — dangerous goods, security information and ways to book (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29
Before You Fly — dangerous goods, security information and ways to book (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29
Not published — Air Vanuatu sets no spare-battery figure for mobility aids.
Not published — Air Vanuatu does not say whether a wheelchair battery must be removed.
Not published — no gel, AGM, sealed lead-acid or dry-cell wheelchair battery rule appears anywhere on airvanuatu.com.
Not published for mobility aids, and the general rule is an unqualified ban: "Corrosive materials (such as alkalis, acids, wet cell batteries, mercury)" are listed as items unacceptable as baggage, and the dangerous-goods list repeats "Corrosives such as mercury wet cell batteries, acids, alkalis". No wheelchair carve-out and no approved-container procedure is published.
Before You Fly — dangerous goods, security information and ways to book (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29 Conditions of Carriage (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29
Not published. Air Vanuatu's dangerous-goods text lists prohibited items generally and states no terminal-insulation, disconnection or immobilisation requirement for a wheelchair battery.
No battery spec sheet or MSDS requirement is published for a passenger's mobility aid. Air Vanuatu does publish Medical Information (MEDIF) and Harmless Discharge forms for medical clearance, and its CARGO channel requires an MSDS for dangerous goods — but that is freight, not a wheelchair battery.
Special Assistance (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29 Medical Information form (MEDIF) — wheelchair codes, seating preference, oxygen charge, toileting (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29 Special Cargo Bookings — live animals (service dogs), 30 kg per-piece OH&S limit, MSDS (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29
Not published.
Not published.
Not published.
Air Vanuatu publishes nothing at all on powered wheelchairs, scooters or lithium batteries, and refers dangerous-goods questions to the Australian CASA "Can I pack that?" app rather than stating its own rules. Three published rules squeeze a power chair from both sides: a passenger's own chair may not go in the cabin, personal electronic equipment may not go in checked baggage, and wet-cell batteries are banned outright as corrosives. A power-chair user must get a written answer from +678 23838 or customercare@airvanuatu.vu before booking.
Manual wheelchairs
A fully collapsible wheelchair and/or mobility aid is carried free in the hold, on top of the baggage allowance (Conditions of Carriage 8.1.1). Air Vanuatu says it will transfer passengers to and from their own mobility device and the aircraft seat.
Conditions of Carriage (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29 Special Assistance (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29
'Passengers may not take their own wheels chair or aids into the aircraft cabin.' Walking canes and crutches may be carried on board and stowed in an overhead locker, and a collapsible walking frame may be stowed in the cabin if crew can stow it safely; non-collapsible frames are not permitted in the cabin.
Special Assistance (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29
Not published, and moot: passengers may not take their own wheelchair into the cabin.
No figure is published, and the airline knows it should be: "Air Vanuatu operates a narrowed bodied aircraft your mobility aid will need to meet the specified size dimensions when adjusted or broken down for our aircraft." Those "specified size dimensions" are specified nowhere — not on the live site, not in the Conditions of Carriage, and not in any archived version of the page back to 2006.
Special Assistance (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29 Special Assistance — snapshot 2006-02-06 (wheelchair.html: original SSR WCHR/WCHS/WCHC wording) (opens in a new tab) · read 2006-02-06
No weight limit for mobility aids is published. Conditions of Carriage 8.1.2 says only that "All Baggage allowances are subject to the occupational health and safety requirements of our staff and aircraft limitations", and the domestic checked allowance is 10 kg. The only weight figure anywhere on the site is on the CARGO page — "to comply with Occupational Health and Safety (OH&S) requirements the item must not weigh more than 30kg per piece" — which is written for freight, not for a mobility aid.
Before You Fly — dangerous goods, security information and ways to book (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29 Conditions of Carriage (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29 Special Cargo Bookings — live animals (service dogs), 30 kg per-piece OH&S limit, MSDS (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29
Not published. The page describes surrender of a walking frame — "you can use your frame to the departure gate where it can be surrendered for stowage in the aircraft hold" — but says nothing about returning a wheelchair or frame at the aircraft door on arrival.
Special Assistance (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29
Article 8.1.1 specifies a "fully collapsible" wheelchair for free hold carriage; rigid, non-collapsible chairs are not addressed anywhere on the site. The wheelchair wording on the Special Assistance page is word-for-word what Air Vanuatu published in 2006, so the absence of a rigid-chair, powered-chair or battery rule is a two-decade-old omission rather than a post-liquidation gap. Air Vanuatu also reserves the right to refuse "items we determine are unsuitable for carriage by reason of their weight, shape or size, fragility, contents or character, or for safety or operational reasons".
Booking & cost
No deadline in hours is published. The Special Assistance page says only to request a wheelchair "prior to departure" and to "allow sufficient time for check-in and boarding"; Conditions of Carriage 7.2.1 requires "prior arrangement with Us" without a figure. Domestic check-in opens 2 h and closes 45 minutes before departure. The one 72-hour figure the site ever carried applied to special meals and has been deleted since the 2022 version of the page.
Special Assistance (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29 Conditions of Carriage (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29 At the Airport (domestic check-in opens 2 h, closes 45 min before departure) (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29
"If wheelchair assistance is required please advise your Air Vanuatu Sales consultant or your Travel Agent to request your wheel chair prior to departure." Conditions of Carriage 7.2.1 adds that acceptance of "other people requiring special assistance is subject to prior arrangement with Us", and that the arrangement "may include… a requirement that a medical certificate, career [sic], medical supplies and/or medical practitioner accompany you on the flight at your cost". Medical clearance uses the MEDIF and Harmless Discharge PDFs.
Special Assistance (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29 Conditions of Carriage (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29 Medical Information form (MEDIF) — wheelchair codes, seating preference, oxygen charge, toileting (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29
Conditions of Carriage 8.1.1: "In addition to the free Baggage allowance, we will carry at no additional charge in the hold a fully collapsible wheelchair and/or mobility aid for you if you are dependent on either or both." READ WITH 7.2.2, which pulls the other way: "should you require special assistance or request us to supply equipment or facilities (such as oxygen) we will be entitled to charge you for the provision of such assistance, equipment or facilities." Carriage of the aid is free; the assistance is not guaranteed to be.
Conditions of Carriage (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29
No number is published. Article 8.1.1 refers to 'a fully collapsible wheelchair and/or mobility aid'.
Conditions of Carriage 9.2.5. There is no mobility-aid-specific rule, so a wheelchair checked into the hold falls under the per-kilo checked-baggage cap — far below the replacement cost of a power chair.
Conditions of Carriage (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29
On board
Availability is not stated. Both the Special Assistance page and the MEDIF define WCHC by reference to a passenger needing to be taken "to the aircraft seat" (the 2006 version spelled it out as requiring "an onboard aisle chair or slide board"), but Air Vanuatu never says it carries one.
Special Assistance (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29 Medical Information form (MEDIF) — wheelchair codes, seating preference, oxygen charge, toileting (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29 Special Assistance — snapshot 2006-02-06 (wheelchair.html: original SSR WCHR/WCHS/WCHC wording) (opens in a new tab) · read 2006-02-06
Not published. The MEDIF instead asks the treating doctor whether the patient can "Walk to the toilet unassisted?" and "Use the aircraft toilet unassisted?", and states plainly: "Flight attendants are unable to give special assistance with toileting and feeing [sic]." No lavatory is described as accessible.
Medical Information form (MEDIF) — wheelchair codes, seating preference, oxygen charge, toileting (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29
"Air Vanuatu will provide assistance to passengers with mobility limitations, where required, including transferring passengers to and from their mobility device and the aircraft seat." The limit is set out in the MEDIF: "Flight attendants are unable to give special assistance with toileting and feeing [sic]", and cabin crew "are trained in first aid only". Conditions of Carriage 7.2.1 lets Air Vanuatu require a carer or medical practitioner to travel with you at your cost.
Special Assistance (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29 Conditions of Carriage (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29 Medical Information form (MEDIF) — wheelchair codes, seating preference, oxygen charge, toileting (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29
The only seating provision Air Vanuatu publishes is on the Medical Information form: "Would you prefer? Aisle seat [ ] / Seat near a toilet [ ]", immediately qualified by "I AGREE THAT COMPLETION OF THIS FORM DOES NOT GUARANTEE ALLOCATION OF A SPECIFIC SEAT, PRIOR TO CHECK-IN AT THE AIRPORT." No movable-armrest, bulkhead or exit-row policy is published anywhere.
Medical Information form (MEDIF) — wheelchair codes, seating preference, oxygen charge, toileting (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29
Fleet detail. Air Vanuatu names no aircraft type anywhere on its site and publishes no hold aperture or compartment figure. It states it operates "a narrowed bodied aircraft" and that a mobility aid "will need to meet the specified size dimensions when adjusted or broken down for our aircraft", without ever specifying them. The concrete warning is on the baggage page: "Stowage and weight limitations apply on some of our services and Baggage may at times need to be transported on a different flight to the Passenger" — on a 10 kg domestic allowance, a wheelchair user should expect their chair may not travel on their own flight.
Worth knowing
Air Vanuatu now runs a domestic-only Vanuatu network (Port Vila, Santo, Tanna and the outer islands); its own Conditions of Carriage and the FAQ define the carrier as "Air Vanuatu (Operations) Limited (In Liquidation)". The website was rebuilt around March 2026 — the old /travel-info/* paths now 301 to /manage/* and /plan/* — and is actively maintained (schedule released 10 July 2026, sitemap lastmod dates through July 2026), so it is safe to cite as current. The disability content, however, is a 20-year-old artefact: the wheelchair paragraph on the Special Assistance page is word-for-word what airvanuatu.com/wheelchair.html said in February 2006, and it still contradicts itself, stating passengers "may not take their own wheels chair or aids into the aircraft cabin" and then allowing canes, crutches and collapsible walking frames in the cabin. Nothing whatsoever is published about powered wheelchairs, scooters or lithium batteries — no watt-hour figure appears anywhere on the site, and dangerous-goods questions are outsourced to the Australian CASA "Can I pack that?" app. FOUR THINGS A TRAVELLER MUST KNOW THAT NO FIELD CAPTURES: (1) SERVICE DOGS ARE BANNED FROM THE CABIN — "Live Animals are not permitted for carriage in the passenger cabin, this includes service dogs. All Live Animals must travel as Cargo only" — stated on the cargo page, never on the Special Assistance page. (2) Conditions of Carriage 7.2.2 reserves the right to charge for special assistance and for any equipment or facilities supplied, even though the aid itself rides free under 8.1.1; in-flight oxygen is priced on the MEDIF at VUV 20,000 per bottle and a stretcher is "at additional cost to the patient". (3) The domestic checked allowance is 10 kg and "Stowage and weight limitations apply on some of our services and Baggage may at times need to be transported on a different flight to the Passenger" — your chair may not arrive with you. (4) Checked-baggage liability is only USD 20 per kilo (CoC 9.2.5), with no mobility-aid exception, so a damaged power chair is effectively uninsured. There is no dedicated accessibility contact of any kind; the Special Assistance page routes you to a sales consultant or travel agent and gives no number of its own. Content was lost in the rebuild: a 72-hour special-meal notice and a "Security Screening for Special Assistance Passengers" section present in the 2022 page are both gone.
Sources
Every figure above traces to one of these.
- s1 Special Assistance (opens in a new tab) · official · read 2026-07-29
- s2 Before You Fly — dangerous goods, security information and ways to book (opens in a new tab) · official · read 2026-07-29
- s3 Conditions of Carriage (opens in a new tab) · official · read 2026-07-29
- s4 Contact Us — sales offices and opening hours (opens in a new tab) · official · read 2026-07-29
- s5 Medical Information form (MEDIF) — wheelchair codes, seating preference, oxygen charge, toileting (opens in a new tab) · official · read 2026-07-29
- s6 Special Cargo Bookings — live animals (service dogs), 30 kg per-piece OH&S limit, MSDS (opens in a new tab) · official · read 2026-07-29
- s7 FAQs (customer service and reservations e-mail addresses; liquidation notice) (opens in a new tab) · official · read 2026-07-29
- s8 At the Airport (domestic check-in opens 2 h, closes 45 min before departure) (opens in a new tab) · official · read 2026-07-29
- s9 Special Assistance — snapshot 2006-02-06 (wheelchair.html: original SSR WCHR/WCHS/WCHC wording) (opens in a new tab) · official · read 2006-02-06
Record quality
Record status researched · confidence medium · 9 official sources · 8 contacts · 19% of the fields this reference tracks are answered. Newest source read 29 July 2026, the day before this page was built. What these mean.