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Disabled man drags himself off plane after Air Canada fails to offer wheelchair
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2023
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I don't understand, even if the airline doesn't maintain any wheelchairs of their own, under special circumstances like these, can't they simply borrow one from airport services or something? Surely the airport has some wheelchairs around? Rather than have the situation end up in the utterly humiliating way in did.
Does Canada have anything like the ADA in the US? Because if it does, the airline fucked up a lot more than just getting bad press. If Canada doesn't, this is a good reason why it should.
Well, I know Canada has a chief accessibility officer. The only reason I know this is because last month AirCanada lost her wheelchair.
She should fire herself for that.
My general understanding is that transport wheelchairs for airplanes are narrower, to fit down the aisles.
Yup, the airport provides the wheelchairs (and someone to push you) if you don’t travel with you own wheelchair. Even if you do travel with your own wheelchair, it’s always put in the hold, not the cabin. I’ve never needed to use a wheelchair ON the plane, just to get to it, but when you book special assistance in advance you’re asked if you can walk up the steps to the plane and whether you can walk through the cabin to your seat so arrangements can be made in advance.
If I had to guess I’d say the airport staff didn’t have the narrower “on board” wheelchair to hand and the pilot didn’t want to miss their take off slot.
The aisle is too narrow (usually) for a regular wheelchair.
In that case they need a special one that is much narrower (usually by removing hand-grips from the outside of the wheels etc).
It's not much use for anything but this purpose, so if they didn't have one, I expect they weren't able to magic one up.
However, they absolutely should have had one.