Air Canada to Investigate “Truly Regrettable Situation” Involving Girl With Cerebral Palsy

Canada’s flag carrier has promised to “look into the the matter further” after a mother accused gate agents of treating her and her three-year-old who has cerebral palsy with “no dignity.”

Air Canada says it will investigate the alleged mistreatment of a mother traveling with her three-year-old daughter who suffers from a severe neurological disorder. Ellie Boyenko describes the events following a September 10th connecting flight to San Francisco International Airport (SFO) as a nightmare.

“All we wanted was for people to show us one minute of kindness,” Boyenko told Global News (GTN). “Or frankly just do their job, making a phone call and helping us out.”

Boyenko says that the ordeal for her and her daughter Kinley started upon arrival in San Francisco where the toddler receives therapy for cerebral palsy. According to Boyenko, when she went to claim Kinley’s stroller, it was nowhere to be found, but it wasn’t until she asked a gate agent for help that the temporary inconvenience turned into a lingering insult complete with eye rolling and general dismissiveness.

Boyenko claims that the Air Canada workers were not especially interested in helping her or her special needs daughter, despite the fact that she was struggling to hold both a heavy diaper bag and Kinley in her arms. To make matters worse, Boyenko alleges that she was told not to leave the counter if she expected assistance – a demand made all the more onerous by the fact that the small child was in desperate need of a diaper change.

After about 45 minutes, the pair were granted leave to visit the restroom, but Boyenko says that when they returned to the counter, she was told that the gate-checked stroller was now in baggage claim. She says that she and and Kinley were then left to trudge to baggage claim on their own without the little girl’s stroller after a request for assistance fell on deaf ears.

The saga was capped off when she arrived at baggage claim only to find that the stroller was not there. The airline employees who appear to have misled her, however, were now located on the other side of security safe from any further questions or requests for assistance.

“We are very concerned to learn of this, as it does not reflect our standards on how we expect customers to be served or cared for, or how gate-checked strollers are to be handled,” Air Canada told Global Television Network News after reporters confronted airline officials about the incident. “We will be contacting our customer directly about this truly regrettable situation, and we are also looking into this matter further.”

Boyenko takes some satisfaction in the fact the the airline is beginning to take her concerns seriously. “I didn’t feel like they understood how they treated us, how they treated Kinley with no dignity,” she explained. “In the end, it has nothing to do with the stroller – it’s how we were treated.”

[Photo: Shutterstock]