Air Canada: “How not to treat your wheelchair passengers”
Air Canada and their wheelchair passengers
It wasn’t so much being kicked in the back that bothered me, but Air Canada’s extreme corporate reaction to smother the event and make me feel like an idiot.
And to tell the truth, I wasn’t kicked in the back; directly anyway.
I had had spinal surgery on May 1st, and possibly foolheartedly left for a trip to Eastern Europe with my wife a month later. The surgeon assured us that all would be well, so who were we to blow against the wind.
In Toronto, transferring to Prague, we were met by a wheelchair attendant. The chairs at some airports, and Toronto is one, have a propellent machine called a DANE. It is very clever and very useful, as it assists the pusher to thrust their cargo up the reasonable steel passage. In this case, the DANE failed and the rather exasperated attendant sought to resolve the issue by taking a wild kick at the machine.
I was, as you can imagine, rather disturbed at this and let out a cry; I received a fairly sharp look in return as he tried some other maneuvers to get us going; this he did, and as we pushed on forward, he simply let it be known that “I had no idea your spine was the problem”. An interesting defence.
Once at the top, I transferred to the long-distance cart, headed to the international terminal and lounge, and we waited for our flight. Once at the gate, the agent immediately identified us (word of this event having raced across the airport campus) and asked if I needed medical attention. I did not, but it was good of him to ask. In fact, the entire incident was one of shock and not of horror or pain.
However, eight hours is a long time to ponder. I landed in Prague keen to file a complaint, seeking nothing monetary, but anticipating an apology and assurance that the next training sessions would place greater emphasis on the chapter in the manual called “Reasons not to kick wheelchair passengers in the back”.
Air Canada do pride themselves on their attention to their disabled clientele, a pride that one has to say is often warranted, but very often misplaced; I am a 75K Aeroplan member, fly frequently and have deep experience of their airport assistance. I submitted my complaint.
And did I get a reaction.
Not from any empathetic accessibility officer, but from a rottweiler lawyer who had turned my complaint into a claim and was asking for a litany of medical reports and a signature on an NDA that would have been more appropriate for a weekend on Epstein Island.
No hint of empathy whatsoever. Simply a mandate for a legal cog to get rid of me.
I demurred; told my side of the story and suddenly he held an “inquiry”; not one that I was allowed to see, of course, but one that determined that I had been histrionic, economical with the truth and had embellished it for some unknown reason. My wife, of course, was not invited to the “inquiry” being considered somehow biased, in complete contrast to the cherubic employees whose testimony was accepted without question.
The offer was 35,000 Aeroplan points if I signed the NDA. Now 35,000 pieces of Air Canada’s rapidly devaluing scrip is a bit of a joke as even the lawyer must have realised, and certainly not worth the ignominies promised in the NDA. And besides, as a curious side to this tale the book that my wife was reading at the time included a malevolent KGB agent, having the same name.
Having his name, I Googled him; he has form.
Immediately came a report from a UK couple who had been disadvantaged in their trip, and his response? Dismissal of their points, and a complete shutdown.
Good for Air Canada, I suppose, but terrible for the disabled passengers. My complaint has still not been addressed; only their attempt to escalate it to a claim, which I have never made, and an offer to settle for some paltry handful of scrip, which given that I have never made a claim, am not accepting.
Nor am I signing a gag order.
Air Canada: you can do better.