‘Passed like a baton’: Advocates, Air Canada CEO clash on accessible travel

Advocates and Air Canada’s CEO are serving up opposing views of accessibility within the nation’s aviation system.

Michael Rousseau, who heads Canada’s largest airline, advised a House of Commons transport committee at this time that an amazing majority of the 1.3 million passengers who requested particular help final yr had a optimistic expertise.

Under a three-year plan, Air Canada has pledged to roll out measures that vary from establishing a buyer accessibility director — now in place — to requiring annual coaching for its 10,000 front-line workers.

But incapacity rights advocate David Lepofsky says the criticism statistics fail to replicate the expertise of many individuals residing with disabilities, who generally wait unassisted for hours or should instruct staff on tips on how to information them.

Lepofsky says Canada wants stricter guidelines and harder enforcement to make sure consistency and accountability — and to stop travellers from being “passed like a baton”  between the curb and the airplane.

Multiple incidents have surfaced at Canadian airways over the previous yr, together with when a B.C. man with spastic cerebral palsy was pressured to tug himself off of an Air Canada airplane in Las Vegas.