An Israel Defense Forces veteran who was severely and permanently injured in a 2014 conflict between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip has filed a lawsuit against United Airlines after airport staff allegedly failed to provide him with any necessary assistance to get to the plane safely.
The lawsuit, filed late last week in a district court in Illinois, accuses Chicago-based United Airlines of negligence and seeks to also claim damages under the Montreal Convention, which makes airlines liable for injuries sustained by passengers during the course of an international flight.
Identified as YK, the passenger was a reserve soldier in the IDF when Israel launched a ground operation in the Gaza Strip on July 17, 2014, after claiming that the terror organization Hamas had violated a humanitarian truce by infiltrating Israel via underground with the aim of attacking a kibbutz.
The IDF referred to the 2014 Gaza War as Operation Protective Edge. YK was one of 469 Israeli soldiers who were injured in the operations, which also claimed the lives of 67 soldiers, and as many as 2,310 Gazans.
YK’s injuries were so severe that he had to have one of his legs amputated and has undergone multiple invasive surgeries to his hand, spine, and other parts of his body.
Now living in Illinois, YK traveled with United Airlines to Israel in November 2025 for a week-long visit.
The outbound flight from Chicago O’Hare to Tel Aviv was uneventful, and YK was permitted to use his battery-powered mobility device right up to the boarding door.
But when YK went to check in for the return flight home at Tel Aviv Ben Gurion Airport, airport staffers demanded that he relinquish his wheelchair at the check-in desk.
United Airlines then allegedly failed to provide YK with any assistance to get to the plane, leaving him to hop on one leg through the entire airport to get to the plane.
As a result, YK says in his lawsuit that he suffered “significant physical pain, bodily injury, and aggravation of pre-existing medical conditions as a direct result of United’s conduct.”
Under Article 17 of the Montreal Convention, airlines can be held liable for injuries sustained by passengers during the course of an international flight. Article 17 explicitly mentions that this includes boarding and deplaning, although the point at which ‘boarding’ starts can be a legal gray area.
In some jurisdictions, courts have ruled that airlines can be sued under Article 17 of the Montreal Convention for incidents that happened way before the passenger boarded the plane.
Perhaps the most famous example of this was in the UK, where Andreas Wuchner was given permission to sue British Airways for a traumatic brain injury he sustained in 2017 when he slipped in a puddle of Baileys Irish cream liquor on the floor of the departures hall.
A judge in this case ruled that Wuchner’s injuries, which have left him permanently disabled, could have been prevented if British Airways airport staff had covered the spill or warned passengers about its presence.
In 2023, United Airlines promised to make a raft of improvements for wheelchair bound and mobility-impaired passengers after federal investigators slammed the carrier following the death of a disabled passenger.
Engracia Figueroa died in October 2021, following a short spell in the ICU after she developed an ulcer from sitting in an inappropriate wheelchair, which then became infected.
Engracia’s bespoke customized wheelchair had been damaged at the hands of United during a flight from Washington National Airport, but the airline only provided an inadequate manual wheelchair as it attempted to get her specialist mobility device fixed.
Eventually, United agreed to replace Engracia’s customized mobility device at a cost of $30,000, but by this point, she had already developed the ulcer that would ultimately claim her life from sitting in the manual wheelchair.
