this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2023
214 points (99.1% liked)

Canada

7311 readers
815 users here now

What's going on Canada?

Related Communities

🍁 Meta

🗺️ Provinces / Territories

🏙️ Cities / Local Communities

Sorted alphabetically by city name.

🏒 SportsHockey

Football (NFL): incomplete

Football (CFL): incomplete

Baseball

Basketball

Soccer

💻 Schools / Universities

Sorted by province, then by total full-time enrolment.

💵 Finance, Shopping, Sales

🗣️ Politics

🍁 Social / Culture

Rules

  1. Keep the original title when submitting an article. You can put your own commentary in the body of the post or in the comment section.

Reminder that the rules for lemmy.ca also apply here. See the sidebar on the homepage: lemmy.ca

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
[email protected]
214
Passenger forced to drag himself off Air Canada flight after airline failed to provide wheelchair assistance (www.cbc.ca)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
32 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

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!