All airlines Europe
Azores Airlines
Powered wheelchairs accepted · carried free · 48 h notice · 300 Wh installed-battery cap.
- Advance notice
- 48hours before departure
- Powered wheelchair
- Yes
- Lithium, battery installed
- 300watt-hours maximum
- Cost to carry
- Free
Who to contact
Transcribed from the airline’s own pages, exactly as it labels them.
- PhonePortugal — SATA / Azores Airlines Contact Center (special assistance requests)
- PhoneUnited States & Canada — toll-free accessibility line (1-800-762-9995)
- PhoneCanada — Toronto Sales Office (listed as a telephone channel for accessibility feedback and alternate formats)
- EmailAccessibility / special assistance requests and accessibility feedback — sata.pt is the SATA Group mail domain shared by Azores Airlines and SATA Air Acores
- EmailComplaints Resolution Officers (CRO) — disability questions under the US programme; sata.pt is the SATA Group mail domain shared by Azores Airlines and SATA Air Acores
- Online form
Postal address for accessibility feedback and alternate formats: Rua Dr. José Bruno Tavares Carreiro n.º 6, 7.º Piso, 9500-119 Ponta Delgada, Açores, Portugal; fax (+351) 296 672 098. The airline publishes no TTY or text-relay number of its own — the accessibility page only reprints the US DOT hotline numbers.
Read it from the source
- Mobility and Wheelchair Assistance (opens in a new tab)
- Important battery information (opens in a new tab)
- Special Assistance (opens in a new tab)
- Accessibility (Canada / USA / Europe commitments, CRO, liability) (opens in a new tab)
- Dimensions inside aircraft — aisle and passenger-door widths you are told to check before booking (opens in a new tab)
- Accessibility Plan 2024 and June 2025 Progress Report (PDFs) (opens in a new tab)
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.
Battery-operated wheelchairs and scooters are accepted. Where the chair has to be prepared for stowage it must be checked at the airport counter rather than the gate; some disassembly may be needed, including disconnecting and reconnecting the battery under Dangerous Goods requirements. The accessibility page adds that battery-powered chairs are accepted "if they fit in the hold".
Mobility and Wheelchair Assistance — Azores Airlines (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29 Accessibility — customer commitment for Canada / USA / Europe (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29
Lithium-ion powered wheelchairs are accepted, under separate rules for batteries the user cannot remove (they stay installed on the chair) and for user-removable batteries such as those on collapsible chairs (which must be carried in the passenger cabin).
Important battery information — Azores Airlines (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29
Where the lithium-ion battery cannot be removed by the user and stays installed: "A battery not exceeding 300 Wh, or two batteries not exceeding 160 Wh each, may remain installed." Batteries must be securely attached and the electrical circuits prevented from functioning, per the manufacturer's instructions.
Important battery information — Azores Airlines (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29
No separate watt-hour cap is published for a battery removed into the cabin. For user-removable batteries Azores requires only terminal insulation, protection from damage (e.g. a protective pouch) and carriage in the passenger cabin; the 300 Wh and 160 Wh figures it publishes are stated for batteries that remain installed and for spares.
"A maximum of one spare battery must not exceed[…] 300 Wh, or for a device that is fitted with [a pair of] batteries required for operation, each battery must not exceed 160 Wh"; the batteries must be individually protected to prevent short circuits.
Important battery information — Azores Airlines (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29
Lithium-ion: a maximum of one spare battery, up to 300 Wh, carried in the passenger cabin. Non-spillable wet, nickel-metal hydride or dry batteries: "only allowed to carry a maximum of one spare battery". Azores publishes no alternative allowing a pair of smaller spares.
Important battery information — Azores Airlines (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29
Depends on the design. A lithium battery the user cannot remove stays installed on the chair. Where the chair allows the user to remove the battery (e.g. a collapsible chair), the removed battery must be insulated, protected from damage and carried in the passenger cabin. Wet batteries, spillable or not, must at least be disconnected.
Important battery information — Azores Airlines (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29
Batteries meeting special provision A67, nickel-metal hydride batteries and dry batteries are accepted: battery disconnected, terminals protected against short circuits with spill-resistant vent caps, original or rigid impermeable packaging, battery securely attached to the aid. A maximum of one spare battery is allowed.
Important battery information — Azores Airlines (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29
Spillable wet batteries may travel in the hold only and need approval by SATA Azores Airlines. Conditions: battery disconnected; terminals protected against short circuits and fitted with spill-resistant vent caps; original packaging or an individual rigid, liquid-tight package, properly identified; battery securely attached to the aid if it stays installed.
Important battery information — Azores Airlines (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29
Terminals must be protected against short circuits — insulated, for example with adhesive tape over exposed terminals and the battery enclosed in a container. Wet batteries must be disconnected and fitted with spill-resistant vent caps. Removed or spare batteries must be protected from damage, e.g. each placed in a protective pouch.
Important battery information — Azores Airlines (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29
No battery spec sheet, MSDS or manufacturer label is demanded. Azores asks you to supply the device's dimensions, weight, battery type and details of any replacement batteries up to 48 h before departure, and to follow the manufacturer's instructions for securing the battery and inhibiting the circuits.
Same published table as for manual chairs: Azores Airlines A320/A321 — 150 cm (L) × 140 cm (W) × 119 cm (H); SATA Air Açores Bombardier Q200/Q400 NextGen — 142 × 114 × 114 cm. Both 200 kg / 440 lbs.
Mobility and Wheelchair Assistance — Azores Airlines (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29
The published wheelchair table, which covers battery-powered chairs and scooters as well as manual chairs, gives a maximum weight of 200 kg / 440 lbs.
Mobility and Wheelchair Assistance — Azores Airlines (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29
"If you have dropped off your battery-operated wheelchair or scooter at check-in, it will be returned to you at Baggage Claim upon arrival at your final destination." Battery chairs needing preparation must be checked at the airport counter and staff take you to the gate in a service wheelchair; gate return is published only for manual chairs.
Mobility and Wheelchair Assistance — Azores Airlines (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29
Some disassembly of a battery-powered chair may be required at the check-in counter, including disconnection and reconnection of the battery under Dangerous Goods requirements.
Manual wheelchairs
Manual wheelchairs may be dispatched at check-in — a service wheelchair is then provided for use inside the airport — or checked at the departure gate if you prefer to use your own chair through the terminal.
Mobility and Wheelchair Assistance — Azores Airlines (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29
The SATA Group mobility page (azoresairlines.pt), whose size table gives a separate column for "Azores Airlines' A320 and A321 fleet", states: "Due to the dimensions and specifications of our aircrafts, please keep in mind that the storage of passenger wheelchairs in the cabin is not possible."
Mobility and Wheelchair Assistance — Azores Airlines (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29
No in-cabin stowage figures are published, because Azores Airlines states that passenger wheelchairs cannot be stowed in the cabin at all.
Azores Airlines' own A320/A321 fleet: maximum wheelchair 150 cm long × 140 cm wide × 119 cm high, 200 kg / 440 lbs. Connecting SATA Air Açores Bombardier Q200 / Q400 NextGen flights are tighter at 142 × 114 × 114 cm (same 200 kg).
Mobility and Wheelchair Assistance — Azores Airlines (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29
Published wheelchair table: maximum weight 200 kg / 440 lbs, on both the Azores Airlines A320/A321 fleet and the SATA Air Açores Bombardier Q200/Q400 NextGen fleet.
Mobility and Wheelchair Assistance — Azores Airlines (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29
A chair checked at the departure gate "will be returned to you at your destination gate or at your connecting airport". Azores warns that a short layover may not allow this where disassembly and reassembly are needed, and suggests using its own service wheelchair instead.
Mobility and Wheelchair Assistance — Azores Airlines (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29
Azores Airlines also publishes cabin, not hold, clearances and tells you to check them before booking: "it is essential that you can move around the aisle and aircraft doors. Before booking your flight, please confirm the width of the doors and aisles of our fleet." Azores Airlines fleet — aisle 44 cm, passenger door 96 cm, seat width 43 cm; SATA Air Açores fleet — aisle 40 cm, passenger door 76 cm, seat width 43 cm.
Booking & cost
Special assistance must be requested at the time of booking or up to 48 hours before departure. The same 48-hour deadline applies to supplying the specifications of any battery or electronic device, and to delivering the INCAD medical form where one is required.
Special Assistance — Azores Airlines (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29 Mobility and Wheelchair Assistance — Azores Airlines (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29 Important battery information — Azores Airlines (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29 Accessibility — customer commitment for Canada / USA / Europe (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29
Azores Airlines asks you to request assistance at booking or up to 48 hours before the flight, by email or telephone. On the day of departure you must be at the check-in desk when it opens so the paperwork can be completed in time for the service to be provided.
Special Assistance — Azores Airlines (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29 Accessibility — customer commitment for Canada / USA / Europe (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29
"If you are travelling with your own mobility equipment, wheelchair, crutches, walkers or other mobility aids you will be able to bring them free of charge in addition to the standard baggage allowance." Assistive devices carried in the cabin are also free and outside the carry-on allowance.
Mobility and Wheelchair Assistance — Azores Airlines (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29 Accessibility — customer commitment for Canada / USA / Europe (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29
The only published count: "Assistive devices are not included in the passenger's carry-on baggage allowance (a maximum of two assistive devices)" carried free in the cabin. No cap is published on checked mobility aids, which travel free in addition to the standard baggage allowance.
Mobility and Wheelchair Assistance — Azores Airlines (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29 Accessibility — customer commitment for Canada / USA / Europe (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29
Report mishandling to the Baggage Irregularities Service at the arrival airport before leaving, or in writing within 7 days. Azores will either handle repair/replacement or pay your preferred supplier directly, and will seek a loan of suitable equipment meanwhile. Liability is limited to SDR 1,519 unless you declare a higher value in advance and pay a fee.
Accessibility — customer commitment for Canada / USA / Europe (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29
On board
There is no on-board aisle chair. Azores Airlines' own Accessibility Plan Progress Report of June 2025 states: "Azores Airlines is in the process of analyzing the operational need for procuring cabin wheelchairs to allow movement on board, mainly to sanitary installations. This is an open item." So on a transatlantic A321 LR you cannot reach the lavatory by aisle chair; crew are not qualified to lift you, and a companion aged 18+ is mandatory if you cannot use the toilet or transfer to your seat autonomously.
Azores Airlines Accessibility Plan — Progress Report June 2025 (PDF on the airline's own CDN) (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29 Special Assistance — Azores Airlines (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29
Azores does not claim an accessible lavatory. It publishes only grab-bar locations: on the A320, toilets with grab bars at the front and on the right at the rear; on the A321neo and the A321 LR, at the front of the aircraft. The Accessibility Plan adds only that "its aircraft feature lavatories with grab bars". Note there is no cabin wheelchair to reach them (see onboard_wheelchair).
Accessibility — customer commitment for Canada / USA / Europe (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29 Azores Airlines Accessibility Plan 2024 (PDF on the airline's own CDN) (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29
Trained employees or contractors give boarding and deplaning assistance including moving to and from the seat, and once on board will help you move to or from the restrooms and stow or retrieve small assistive devices. Cabin crew are not qualified to lift you, feed you, give medication or help inside the lavatory — that requires a companion aged 18 or over.
Special Assistance — Azores Airlines (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29 Accessibility — customer commitment for Canada / USA / Europe (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29
Seats designated for passengers with disabilities have movable armrests on the A320, A321neo and A321 LR. A movable-aisle-armrest seat is provided when you board by aisle chair and cannot transfer over a fixed armrest; bulkhead seats, extra legroom and an adjacent seat for a companion are provided on request, subject to availability in the same cabin.
Accessibility — customer commitment for Canada / USA / Europe (opens in a new tab) · read 2026-07-29
Fleet detail. Wheelchair limits are published per fleet: Azores Airlines A320/A321 — 150 cm (L) × 140 cm (W) × 119 cm (H), max 200 kg / 440 lbs; SATA Air Açores Bombardier Q200 and Q400 NextGen, used on the inter-island connections sold alongside S4 flights — 142 × 114 × 114 cm, same 200 kg limit. Separately, and about the cabin rather than the hold, Azores publishes aisle and passenger-door widths and asks you to check them before booking: Azores Airlines fleet aisle 44 cm and door 96 cm; SATA Air Açores fleet aisle 40 cm and door 76 cm (seat width 43 cm on both).
Worth knowing
HOW THESE PAGES WERE READ ON 2026-07-29. www.azoresairlines.pt and www.sata.pt both resolve to a single Microsoft Azure Application Gateway (20.103.0.23) that returned HTTP 403 to every direct request from this machine — browser and tool user agents, HTTP/1.1 and HTTP/2, http and https, www and apex, even robots.txt and favicon — so the block is host-wide and looks reputation- or geography-based rather than page-specific. The four HTML pages cited (s1–s4) were therefore read live through Google's translation proxy (www-azoresairlines-pt.translate.goog, which fetches from Google's own addresses and returns the origin's markup); the text matched the Internet Archive captures of 2026-03-17 to 2026-07-15 word for word, so the citations were moved from those snapshots to the canonical live URLs with a retrieved date of 2026-07-29. The three PDF sources (s5, s6) and the CDN in general are on a different host, cdn.azoresairlines.pt, which sits behind Azure Front Door and IS directly reachable — those were fetched with no intermediary at all. IMPORTANT CHANGE THIS PASS: the June 2025 Progress Report (s6) says in plain words that Azores Airlines has no cabin wheelchair — "Azores Airlines is in the process of analyzing the operational need for procuring cabin wheelchairs to allow movement on board, mainly to sanitary installations. This is an open item." — so onboard_wheelchair moved from null ("not published") to false. On a 6-hour A321 LR transatlantic sector that means no way to reach the lavatory unless you can walk or be walked there by your own companion. Azores Airlines (S4) shares the SATA group site with SATA Air Açores (SP), and the published wheelchair table covers both fleets — the smaller Q200/Q400 figures belong to the inter-island carrier, not to S4's own A320/A321s. Two further points: passengers travelling with a wheelchair cannot carry pets in the cabin (the animal must go in the hold), and since 17 March 2025 Azores refunds the fare difference where a wheelchair user had to take a more expensive flight because the chair could not be carried (Azores-operated flights bought directly, identical origin, destination and cabin). Azores publishes a Canadian ATPRR Accessibility Plan (2023/2024/2025), available in large print, braille or audio on request.
Sources
Every figure above traces to one of these.
- s1 Special Assistance — Azores Airlines (opens in a new tab) · official · read 2026-07-29
- s2 Mobility and Wheelchair Assistance — Azores Airlines (opens in a new tab) · official · read 2026-07-29
- s3 Important battery information — Azores Airlines (opens in a new tab) · official · read 2026-07-29
- s4 Accessibility — customer commitment for Canada / USA / Europe (opens in a new tab) · official · read 2026-07-29
- s5 Azores Airlines Accessibility Plan 2024 (PDF on the airline's own CDN) (opens in a new tab) · official · read 2026-07-29
- s6 Azores Airlines Accessibility Plan — Progress Report June 2025 (PDF on the airline's own CDN) (opens in a new tab) · official · read 2026-07-29
- s7 Dimensions inside aircraft — seat, aisle and passenger-door widths per fleet (opens in a new tab) · official · read 2026-07-29
Record quality
Record status researched · confidence high · 7 official sources · 6 contacts · 91% of the fields this reference tracks are answered. Newest source read 29 July 2026, the day before this page was built. What these mean.