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.
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.