(Montreal) Air Canada CEO Michael Rousseau apologized for accessibility issues for passengers with reduced mobility and announced measures to improve the travel experience for hundreds of thousands of passengers with disabilities.
Mr. Rousseau announced Thursday that the air carrier would accelerate its three-year accessibility plan, after recent reports of distressing treatment of passengers with reduced mobility.
In particular, it was reported that a man with spastic cerebral palsy was forced to drag himself off a plane in Las Vegas due to a lack of assistance from staff.
“Air Canada recognizes the challenges faced by customers with disabilities when traveling by air, and accepts its responsibility to provide convenient and consistent service to make traveling with us easier,” Mr. Rousseau said in a statement. . Sometimes we do not respect this commitment, and we sincerely apologize for this.
“We are committed to improving and demonstrating it by taking concrete steps. »
The carrier undertakes in particular to ensure that travelers who request assistance during the transfer between the terminal and the plane are always the first to board and are seated at the front of the reserved cabin.
Mobility aids, such as wheelchairs, will also be stored in the cabin “where possible”. The carrier also wants to include these mobility aids in an application to track checked baggage.
Air Canada also aims to implement annual and recurring training on accessibility for its approximately 10,000 airport employees.
The “skeptical” RAPLIQ
Francine Leduc, president of the Regroupement des activists pour l’inclusion au Québec (RAPLIQ), estimated that these measures are not new. “I don’t have the impression that these measures will be reliable or will really be put forward, or will be respected properly,” she said in a telephone interview. “I’m skeptical. »
Heather Walkus, president of the Council of Canadians with Disabilities, said the problems go beyond a single airline and extend to gaps in federal law – despite a regulatory overhaul in 2020 in the wake of the Accessible Canada Act, adopted the previous year.
Ms. Walkus cited the example of a regulation that requires federally regulated businesses to participate in the development of policies, programs and services for people with disabilities.
“An executive could go to Tim Hortons and talk to someone in a wheelchair, and then they could say they consulted with the disability community,” Walkus said. She also maintains that the organization she chairs was not contacted by Air Canada about its new accessibility plan.
Air Canada executives spoke Thursday morning with Transport Minister Pablo Rodriguez and Kamal Khera, Minister of Diversity, Inclusion and Persons with Disabilities, following a summons from Mr. Rodriguez last week to the following several high-profile events involving disabled passengers.
These include the Las Vegas incident with 50-year-old Rodney Hodgins, which sparked an investigation by the Canadian Transportation Agency.
This case prompted British Columbia actor Ryan Lachance, who suffers from quadruple spastic cerebral palsy, to also recount his misadventure. He claims he was dropped and injured by Air Canada staff while trying to get off a plane in Vancouver last May. The crew refused to use the lift they needed to leave their seats.
Minister Rodriguez described these incidents as “unacceptable.”
“We will follow up on the results of this meeting, including before the busy holiday season, to ensure that all Canadians are treated with respect and dignity when they travel,” he wrote Thursday on X ( formerly Twitter).
Craig Landry, Air Canada’s chief operating officer, said the airline receives more than 700,000 requests for assistance from travelers with disabilities each year, or nearly 2,000 customers a day, highlighting the need more reliable accessibility services.
“When customers travel with accessibility needs, we are expected to be able to meet them 100% of the time,” Landry admitted in a telephone interview. Any shortcomings are unacceptable. »
The revamped accessibility plan, initially announced as a three-year process in June, will cost “several million dollars,” he said.
David Lepofsky, a visiting research professor of disability rights at Western University’s law school, said that as a blind person, he “was afraid” to fly in Canada because of the lack reliability of the service, despite an overhaul of the regulations since 2020.
“The inconsistency with the quality of ground support you receive is appalling,” he said. The problem is that we have airlines that consistently fail to respect and obey this law, and an enforcement regime that is fatally flawed. »
Statistics Canada found that 63 per cent of the 2.2 million people with disabilities who used federally regulated transportation in 2019 and 2020 faced a mobility barrier.
Air Canada’s new “director of customer accessibility”, Kerianne Wilson, stressed that the airline will notably make more effort to take care of electric wheelchairs and other mobility aids when they are stored in the hold.
“We realize that these mobility aids are not luggage: it is an extension of their body, it is an essential element of their ability to travel and their autonomy. We know that providing them with that comfort will be essential,” she said in an interview.
