Air Canada has been forced to apologize after a man with spastic cerebral palsy was forced to drag himself off a plane when the flagship carrier failed to provide a wheelchair for him.
Rodney Hodgins, 49, a hardware salesman from British Columbia who requires the use of a motorized wheelchair, flew to Las Vegas with his wife, Deanna, to celebrate their anniversary in August.
But when the plane landed, the flight attendant told the couple there wasn’t time to get a wheelchair on board before the plane had to prepare for takeoff again, Deanna Hodgins wrote in a recent Facebook post.
When the attendant said Hodgins would have to pull himself off the plane alone, the couple at first thought she was joking – but then she repeated the request.
“We use the services of a third party wheelchair assistance specialist in Las Vegas to provide safe transport on and off aircraft,” the statement read.
In October, Air Canada lost the wheelchair of Canada’s chief accessibility officer Stephanie Cadieux, who described the experience as “immensely frustrating and dehumanizing”.
“I just wanted to make a difference for somebody else so they don’t have to experience that again,” he said. »
