Wheelchair passenger says he had to drag himself off Air Canada plane
Air travel is an essential mode of transportation for people worldwide, offering convenience and connectivity. However for passengers with disabilities, flying presents numerous challenges. Navigating airports, ensuring wheelchair accommodations and obtaining necessary information have often been cumbersome, Airlines and advocacy groups have been working to make air travel more accessible for disabled passengers, ensuring every traveler enjoys a safe, comfortable, and dignified flying experience.
But for Rodney Hodgins, who traveled last August with his wife Deanna, his flight into Las Vegas was to celebrate their first wedding anniversary was far from dignified - traumatic, he says, that it ruined the rest of his trip.
Hodgins, a wheelchair user, says that he had to drag himself along the aisle, helped by his wife, when mobility assistance staff from the airport didn’t turn up to assist him. He says that Air Canada staff instructed him to disembark on foot – despite the fact that he can’t walk – so that they could turn the plane around.
The narrow aisles on commercial passenger aircraft generally cannot accommodate wheelchairs onboard - so users are usually asked to leave their chair at the door of the plane, where it is loaded into the hold. The passenger then transfers into their seat with an aisle chair – a narrow, notoriously uncomfortable implement – by airport assistance staff. Upon landing, the reverse happens.
Because of his condition, Hodgins generally needs mobility assistance staff to help him in the aisle chair – and the couple say they informed Air Canada of his requirements when they booked the assistance alongside the flights, eight months ahead of travel.
The couple say that about 20 minutes after landing in Vegas, while they were in their Row 12 seats, watching the power chair being removed from the hold and brought up to the jet bridge, a male flight attendant walked over and asked them to walk to the front of the plane. The reason? They needed to prepare for the next flight, he said.
“We thought he was kidding at first,” says Deanna Hodgins. “He was the flight attendant – he was there the whole flight – he saw my husband be brought on the flight with an aisle chair. So we laughed, thinking it was absurd.”
But the flight attendant wasn’t joking. “He insisted that the plane had to turnaround, and had another flight, and we needed to get off,” she says. “We started panicking. We were like, what do you mean we have to get off? We can’t – his wheelchairs out in the jet way. We didn’t know how we were going to do that.” But, they say, the flight attendant continued to insist. Hodgins needs more than one person to maneuver him into the chair – but he says this staffer told him that nobody else was coming. “I’ve radioed twice, there’s no one here,” he told them.
The couple decided to wait, assuming that someone else would eventually turn up. Meanwhile the cleaning crew worked their way down the plane and the cabin crew as the cleaning team reached their row, the Hodgins still felt pressure to move, says Deanna Hodgins. “They were like, ‘we have to turn this plane around.’ That’s when Rodney finally just said, ‘We’re going to have to get off this plane somehow – I’m just going to have to drag myself. There was no way I could get to the front of the plane because of course I can’t walk,” I was pretty ticked off, but I told my wife to help me up on my feet.”
I can’t really move my legs so my wife had to go on the floor and help me [move them].” Hodgins supported himself by holding onto seats on either side of the aisle as his wife moved his legs. With her on the floor and him dragging himself with his arms, they managed to go the whole 12 rows. But when they reached the galley area ahead of the front row, there was nothing more for him to hold onto – and still no sign of any assistance staff. “I had to get my wife in front of me and hold me up with her shoulders,” he says.
The incident had a knock-on effect on their trip to Vegas, they say, as Hodgins had sustained physical damage and couldn’t even get in the shower for 3 days.
In an email from the airline to the couple in response to the Hodgins’ account of how they were treated, Air Canada says that, “Based on the information we currently have available, we have to regrettably admit that Air Canada was in violation of the disability regulations.”
Air Canada said in a statement released, that “The level of care that should have been provided at the destination airport was not. We use the services of a third-party wheelchair assistance specialist in Las Vegas to provide safe transport on / off aircraft. Our investigation reveals that the flight attendants followed procedures, including offering assistance that was declined. Based on how this serious service lapse occurred, we will be evaluating other mobility assistance service partners in Las Vegas.”
Deanna Hodgins says that a female flight attendant offered to carry their bags – but is adamant that no other assistance was offered. “They didn’t offer assistance to move him in any way, or assist us in moving him, at any time at all.” While Air Canada appears to be blaming mobility assistance staff, the Hodgins blame the airline, saying “It wasn’t the transport crew that told us to get off the plane.”
The airline has sent them $2,000 in flight credits, but the couple was hoping for something rather cheaper: time.
“Rodney was hoping that someone high up from Air Canada would just have a human to human decent conversation about how it made him feel, just to make him feel human again,” say Deanna. “Just to say, ‘Hey, this is how you failed. And this can never happen again. And this is kind of the policies that we’d like to see you put in place, because you can say sorry all you want, but until you do something, it doesn’t mean much.’
Hodgins now wants to use the incident to raise awareness of what people with disabilities – roughly one in six of the global population – have to cope with while flying. “We didn’t want special treatment. We just wanted to fly, and we just wanted dignified treatment. No one’s asking for special treatment – just simple assistance.”
Source: External
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