Man In Wheelchair Doesn’t Have Room For His Wheelchair Battery On Virgin Australia Flight—So They Kick Him Off

An Australian disability advocate boarded a Sydney to Adelaide flight with his wheelchair, his service dog and the power-assist motor he uses to get around. Next thing he knew, he was wheeled back off it in front of a full cabin because crew could not agree on where the wheelchair's motor should go. He filmed the argument and the removal, and the airline has since admitted its own staff classified the device wrongly and apologised.

Shane Hryhorec (@shanehryhorec) recently posted the two-minute, 59-second clip, which has been watched more than 15.6 million times in just days at the time of reporting.

“Kicked off a Virgin Australia plane today,” he wrote in the caption. “I didn't choose that seat. The airline put me there. Yet I was the person removed when the setup they provided didn't work.”

He founded the wheelchair supplier Push Mobility in 2013, set up the not-for-profit Accessible Beaches Australia, and was named a 2025 South Australian Local Hero nominee for that work. He has C5 incomplete quadriplegia and travels constantly for his business with his service dog Whitney and a SmartDrive, a battery motor that clips to a manual wheelchair.

Nowhere To Put It

The dispute was about a seat Virgin Australia purportedly assigned him. “I'm just about to be offloaded a Virgin plane heading to Adelaide because my SmartDrive can't go by my feet,” he says at the start of the video. “There's no room with my service dog and there's a bulkhead, so it looks like I won't be flying today.”

He tells the crew he had flown four times that week without a problem. A crew member's reply became the thread's most-quoted line. “They've done the wrong thing then, just to accommodate you,” the staff member says. Hryhorec keeps returning to the same point: “I didn't choose to sit here. You put me here as an airline. I didn't make a decision to sit in this seat.”

Asked whether he would move to a smaller seat with less room, he says he does not mind “as long as I can sit somewhere where there's room for my service animal.” He is offloaded anyway. “I feel so upset, so angry that an airline would treat people this way,” he says afterwards.

As he was wheeled off, he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC News), the crew ran an announcement apologising to the cabin for the delay. “So, everyone's watching me getting wheeled off, as they're apologising to all the passengers,” he said.

The Airline Says It Got The Classification Wrong

Pressed by ABC News on whether motors like the SmartDrive are allowed in overhead lockers, Virgin Australia said the device “was subsequently incorrectly assessed primarily as a lithium battery rather than as a battery-powered mobility aid.” That mistake cascaded throughout the rest of the incident: “This meant the relevant provisions for the device were not applied and the guest was advised it could not be stowed in the overhead locker.”

The airline added that the device had not been declared to it before boarding, and said it was reviewing “how the device was assessed, to help ensure the classification and applicable stowage requirements are clearer to our teams.”

Mobility aids do sit in their own category for most airlines. Virgin's own battery rules bar lithium-ion batteries above 160 watt-hours from the cabin, then carve out an exception for mobility devices: “Electric Wheelchair/Mobility Device exemptions apply.” The same page tells passengers to “contact us before you fly to check what is allowed.”

Hryhorec says crew had let him put the motor overhead on three separate Virgin flights in the days before. One commenter, posting as pawsandwheelsot, expressed their own concerns: “Has the policy changed? I always used to have it in the overhead.”

“Can You Delete Those Videos For Me?”

Near the end of the footage, a staff member asks whether he had been filming and then asks him to delete it. “I think it's important that people can see what I just experienced,” he answers.

That exchange drew some of the thread's largest reactions. “The audacity to ask you to delete the videos,” wrote herrahnothera in a comment with more than 196,000 likes. A commenter posting as sababowlingz summarized the interaction: “‘Do you have proof of what we just put you through?' ‘Yes.' ‘Can you delete that please?' ‘No.'”

A comment that received more than 340,000 likes came from xsillyposture: “‘Just to accommodate you'—he is in a wheelchair?” A commenter posting as ryano955 asked why nobody moved: “A full plane and not one person stepped up to swap seats.”

Where It Goes Next

Hryhorec has lodged a complaint with the Australian Human Rights Commission, which handles discrimination complaints through a free conciliation process. The commission cannot litigate for him: a complainant whose matter is terminated has 60 days to take it to the Federal Circuit and Family Court or the Federal Court, at their own cost.

Virgin Australia has gone further in the days since the incident happened. “We regret what occurred and acknowledge that we did not meet our own standards in how we handled this situation,” the airline told Pedestrian News, calling his experience “below what we expect for our customers.” Hryhorec was rebooked on a later flight and given lounge access, and says he will not withdraw the complaint until he is satisfied something changes.

The video ends on the line he said to a staff member on his way out of the plane. “I'm about to have a breakdown, so I'm just going to go somewhere quietly and do that,” he says, “while you try to find me a way to go home.”

BoardingArea reached out to Hryhorec via TikTok direct message and to Virgin Australia via email for comment. We'll be sure to update this if either responds.

@shanehryhorec

Kicked off a Virgin Australia plane today. I boarded my flight from Sydney to Adelaide with my wheelchair, SmartDrive and service dog, just as I have on multiple Virgin flights over the past week. The problem was the seat Virgin had allocated me. There was nowhere safe to secure my SmartDrive without it rolling around near my service dog. I asked for another solution, including moving seats or securing it elsewhere on the aircraft. Instead, I was offloaded from the plane in front of everyone. I didn't choose that seat. The airline put me there. Yet I was the person removed when the setup they provided didn't work. This is exactly why so many people with disabilities have anxiety about flying. It's 2026. Disabled passengers shouldn't have to fight this hard simply to get on a plane and get home. I'm angry, upset and genuinely shocked by how this was handled today. More to come.

♬ original sound – Shane Hryhorec