The smallest state

I was on the YVR-PDX flight yesterday. A delay of one hour was compounded by a woman being pushed in a wheelchair by an AC employee. The woman in the wheelchair was carrying a 14-18 year old boy who was physically (no legs) and mentally handicapped in her arms.

The boy, his mom, brother and father had flown in from Taiwan, the brother spoke some English, the parents none, the brother and the father each was carrying/pulling/wearing about 4-5 bags each. Gate 94 at YVR is at the end of a long hall where they park the propeller planes that do hops to Seattle and Portland for both AC and Alaska.

Where this gets odd is that an AC employee pushed the lady and her son to the gate. Before they started to board Groups 1 and 2, they asked if anyone needed assistance boarding, they helped a young mother and her two small children onto the plane first. One of the little kids dropped their bottle and there was milk at the middle part of the stair case. The family with the handicapped child (if I was to guess) didn't understand the announcement.

When Groups 1 and 2 was called, I got in line, the brother, the mom and the dad all got in line ahead of me. The mom rolled up to the gate, then stood up to walk onto the plane. An AC employee then takes the empty wheelchair and heads to the elevator. The GA announced that there was spilt milk all down the stairs and to be careful, the GA said something to the father and then the brother who spoke some English, she may have been offering assistance, I didn't hear.

The mom then carries the boy down the stairs, navigates the spilt milk and the family reconvenes at the bottom of the stairs. As I walk by, an AC employee shows up with the same wheelchair they had upstairs. The plane was about 80% capacity so they told the family to check some bags, this was assisted by a Chinese speaking passenger.

The family gets onto the plane and mom and the handicapped son sits in the first row. Then two other young men get on and they are in the first row. After a bit of a discussion where the young men offered to take the assigned seats of the lady, she is asked to carry her son back to row 7. Now the mother is ready for takeoff when another GA comes out to the tarmac and has a meeting outside with one of the two FA's. The GA then gets on the plane and tells the mother that the child has to be seatbelted in before takeoff. The mom had the boy on her lap. People switch seats and move around so they can sit four abreast.

The Ground Crew then doesn't like the seatbelt idea because the child has no legs and would simply fall over the seatbelt in an emergency and indicate they may not be allowed to fly. The helpful Chinese passenger comes forward to assist and indicates they have flown in from Taiwan and need to get to Portland and when they flew to Vancouver it wasn't a problem. One of the FA's then indicates that no air crew would let them fly like this and asked to see their incoming tickets. When these are produced the FA is still indicating that it would be impossible and nobody would be allowed to fly. So the family pulls out the boarding pass' and they flew in on an AC flight.

After a bit of an embarrassing conversation, they decide the boy and his family can stay, but the boy has to seated against the window. More shuffling ensues as the family struggles to place this poor kid in a window seat and get a seatbelt on.

Now, no AC employee was rude, short tempered or even frustrated. They seemed to me to be genuinely concerned for this young man's safety. However this all could have been shortened and done with a lot more dignity than it was. One of the employees method of communicating was to repeat the phrase in English a little slower and louder, over and over.

If a tiny bit of proactive work was done by the AC employees at the airport in terms of loading the family onto the plane ahead of time, possibly finding a Chinese speaking employee to assist and using an elevator to get them down the stairs, it would have been a better experience.

Admiral Ackbar

Isn't there an online employee wiki with SOP to handle situations like this or is that beyond AC IT's limited skillset?

Awful way to handle it that is for sure. So many opportunities wasted to save it as well.

24left

Agree.

I think the word dignity is exactly right.

Agree. Of all the airports in this country with employees and other staff who can speak the languages of many of the people who fly through YVR....

CZAMFlyer

A lesson hard learned in the Robert Dziekański case.

A side note, the main terminal complex at YVR is likely the most accessible public building in Canada. Since private management took over in 1992, great lengths have been taken to make every aspect of the domestic, transborder and international terminals accessible to those with physical, sensory or cognitive impairments. Next time you pass through, have a hard look for one of those blue 'stickmen' in a wheelchair, for example. Short of a blue painted parking space outside, I bet you can't find one.

Now...to solve the issue of access into certain common Downsview-assembled aircraft types that serve the airport.

Transpacificflyer

I expect that we are all on the same page on this one. What annoys me is that this was preventable and could have been managed manageable had the airline supported/facilitated/encouraged the use of communication between its stations. Surely, there could have been a note added to the passenger file subsequent to checkin at TPE. How difficult was it to alert YVR? Just a little bit of planning accomplishes so much,

The smallest state

Preventable is exactly the word I wish I had used in the write-up. Whether it was AC or YVR or both, this whole thing could have been done properly.

Instead everyone was slightly embarrassed and I'm sure if this was the families first visit to Canada (no idea if it was/wasn't) their take away would be less than glowing.

s0ssos

AC is a disgrace to the good name of Canadians

Bohemian1

+1 to that. Seems like a breakdown in communications between stations or a lack of proactive thinking by one or more of the AC staff to me.

KenHamer

YVR also has a large number of volunteer traveller's assistants (or whatever they are called) roaming the airport.

KenHamer

Ambassadors.

http://www.yvr.ca/en/media/news-rele...or-dog-program

24left

YVR volunteers have always impressed me. They are helpful and gracious and I would think another great example of what YVR offers. The only other airports I've been through that have similar volunteers (all in easily identifiable uniforms) were SRQ and PHX. ATL has many Delta Assist staff all over the terminals to help out. Maybe YYZ has them, but I have no idea where they are.

If AC has volunteers anywhere in the system, I've never seen them.

Still, this very sad story seems to be another example of very poor communication between AC staff, ground staff, and language barrier - certainly helped by another pax, but could have been dealt with by airport employees.

The smallest state

DFW has good volunteers as well. Bear in mind this was a flight to Portland so we were all behind US CBP, off of the top of my head, I don't know if the volunteers can go back there.

Smallest State puts on his Make America Sarcastic Again red hats........'One of these nice Canadian senior citizens might hop a plane to the USA without a ticket and be a security threat'

BlueMilk

Shout out to YYC's excellent volunteers.