A B.C. man who uses a wheelchair says he was forced to drag himself off an Air Canada flight in Las Vegas, after the airline failed to provide the assistance required for him to safely exit the plane.
Rodney and Deanna Hodgins flew from Vancouver to Las Vegas in late August, in a much-anticipated trip to celebrate their first wedding anniversary. Rodney, who is 49, has spastic cerebral palsy, and uses a motorized wheelchair.
The Prince George, B.C. couple travels every year, and is accustomed to the standard process to help him exit the plane. Usually, after the rest of the passengers have exited, an airline employee will bring an aisle chair — an extremely narrow version of a wheelchair controlled by handles.
But after landing in Las Vegas, an Air Canada flight attendant told the Hodgins no help, and no aisle seat, was coming — and said Rodney would need to get to the front of the plane by himself.
The couple said the suggestion was so absurd, they laughed, thinking it was a joke.
“How am I supposed to get to the front of my plane when I can’t walk? If I didn’t need a wheelchair, I wouldn’t have been sitting there,” said Rodney.
I usually avoid air Canada, but was forced to fly them last week. Didn’t think it was possible, but they’ve gotten worse.
Flying is a miracle. We are going to put you in a metal machine, burn some old dinosaurs, and get you safely in the air, to wherever you want to go. In the air! LIKE A BIRD. OR MAGIC. Air Canada takes this miracle, and makes it the very worst experience possible. Vomit covered seats. No access for the handicapped. The list goes on.
Stop bailing these Corporate fuckers out. Next time they get too greedy and need a handout, nationalize them.
Return some semblance of joy to the miracle of flight.
Air Canada hasn’t always been this bad but in the last few years I’m currently embarrassed they are our national flag carrier.
Canada really needs to force them to change their name
I bet to differ. We’ve gone with the other carrier whenever we can because AC has been just so comically bad and apathetic since almost the 1900s (and I love saying it like that).
But, once a year when #reasons dictate, we buck up and fly AC … and then we reaffirm our fleeting vow to never again.
This is just one of the many situations when I dearly wish to be proved wrong. But, it’s like a sergeant once said: “Don’t change, [soldier]; I’ve a BET riding on you!”
I used to fly them a lot and for international travel and I thought they were passable. Comparable to other options.
The domestic stuff was sometimes served a lot better by WestJet but even they were quite scrappy. Domestic is hard, European carriers do that a lot better.
But post-pandemic even their international stuff is an embarrassment. And among my colleagues (worldwide team) they’ve noticed too!
They also will do absolutely everything they can to refuse you a refund when they cancel your flight and book you on another. If you paid for an extra bag or a seat upgrade and your plane gets cancelled, absolutely forget about getting the extra you paid back refunded to you.
Went all the way up to the ombudsman for a $50 refund.
I avoid them like the plague. My last flight with them was from Toronto to Dubai. Absolutely horrible service. They ran out of chicken and only had a vegetarian dish and only served us one meal, which is ridiculous for a 14 hour flight. And the customer service is awful.
I am now trying to find alternatives, even if they are a bit more expensive.
Why do they have to wear our country’s name on their planes? They represent us so poorly when they’re abroad.
“Canada” is just a brand like any other. Don’t get attached, don’t believe the bullshit.
Oil comes from plants, not animals.
You found the specific point of post and clarified it. Thank you. Without your pedanticness no one would have any idea what my comment meant. You’re doing great work.
A bit fragile but I’m sorry I hurt you.
Old plants, not dinosaurs. The plants had all the energy, not the dinosaur fossils.
You found the specific point of post and clarified it. Thank you. Without your pedanticness no one would have any idea what my comment meant. You’re doing great work.
Wait, now I’m confused. Planes don’t eat dinosaurs? What was Sully about, then?
I always see people with bad experiences with them and guess that I have to consider myself lucky. I travel with them pretty regularly (no choice) and there has only been one incident, the flight was overbooked. The attendants at the airport immediately informed me, handed me a check for $1800 CAD, and I was on another plane 2 hours later. The ticket was no more than $250 mind you. This happened last year.
So this poor traveller at least had sufficient mobility left to be able to drag himself out of the airplane, undignified as that is. What would have happened if he didn’t? Don’t they have procedures for e.g. unresponsive patients?
And trying to blame a subcontractor doesn’t cut it. The passenger was an Air Canada customer and Air Canada should have resolved the issue one way or another without forcing a disabled man to drag himself out of an airplane like an extra in The Walking Dead.
Deanna said their family is accustomed to the legwork involved in travelling…
Bruh
Tbh that is an outstanding pun lol
In a statement, Air Canada said "we use the services of a third party wheelchair assistance specialist in Las Vegas.
Do all airlines “hire out” their wheelchair assistance? It seems simple enough just to have an “aisle chair” on hand that an air steward (or even the guy’s wife) could push him out in. Why isn’t that an option?
Airlines barely do anything by themselves. All ground services are provided by contractors, so why not wheelchairs.
My guess is that AC has an investor who also has shares in a wheelchair assistance company, so that investor gets to double-dip on their profits.
(This is something you see often these days with large investors.)
Possibly (likely, even), but actually liability for these exact types of situations is the reason they contract services.
“Oh something went wrong? Well it’s the contractor’s fault, blame them instead.”
If air flight is a necessity it should not be in private hands. Nothing essential should be making profit for anybody. Everything essential should be provided by the government through taxation and should be at the lowest possible cost to the taxpayer.
Healthcare, electricity, water, natural gas (before it’s phased out) and some kind of basic isp and cell system that provides a minimum level of service (like 500kb/s with no data cap).
I agree with everything except for “500kb/s” that is not enough…
5 Mbps would be my lower limit, if I had to set one.
500kb/s is enough to access online services (like federal, provincial, healthcare, etc), would be easy to provide even in remote areas and a negligible cost to network operators. The only reason people “need” megabit connections today is endless feeds of video content.
500 kbit/s is just awfully slow.
You talk like megabit is overkill, when in fact it’s absolutely not.
If you’re even gonna bother with providing networking to everyone at least set your bar a little higher.
Forcing them to provide free 1-10 Mbit/s to everyone in range of a WWAN or using regular wired WAN, wouldn’t affect operators in any meaningful way.
So punishment for being poor?
There is no technological reason for it to be that limited…
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Again? Someone in management needs to have their spinal cord severed so they can better understand the problem.
Air Canada has been in business for 49 years. That is long enough to figure out how to run an airline. The fact that they keep fucking up like this shows that they literally don’t give the first fuck about customer service.
Air Canada is a giant corporation designed to extract subsidies from the government of Canada. They only pretend to be an airline to justify those subsidies. That’s why they always treat their customers as an inconvenience.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
(tldr: 1 sentences skipped)
man who uses a wheelchair says he was forced to drag himself off an Air Canada flight in Las Vegas, after the airline failed to provide the assistance required for him to safely exit the plane.
Rodney and Deanna Hodgins flew from Vancouver to Las Vegas in late August, in a much-anticipated trip to celebrate their first wedding anniversary.
(tldr: 3 sentences skipped)
Usually, after the rest of the passengers have exited, an airline employee will bring an aisle chair — an extremely narrow version of a wheelchair controlled by handles.
But after landing in Las Vegas, an Air Canada flight attendant told the Hodgins no help, and no aisle seat, was coming — and said Rodney would need to get to the front of the plane by himself.
(tldr: 21 sentences skipped)
The Hodgins said they decided to share their experience after seeing a high-profile story about Stephanie Cadieux, Canada’s chief accessibility officer.
(tldr: 2 sentences skipped)
Deanna said their family is accustomed to the legwork involved in travelling, including researching the type of plane and whether it can accommodate a wheelchair.
(tldr: 3 sentences skipped)
The original article contains 673 words, the summary contains 185 words. Saved 73%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
