songsc

So if you fly AC, you need to be familiar with hundreds if not more of the third party providers AC uses, and when the issue arises, it's your responsibility to figure out which third party provider is responsible and deal with them directly.

This coming from a long term AC employee in a customer facing position paints a pretty clear picture of AC's culture.

D404

I'm not sure you intended it this way, but it really just makes AC come off worse to me, if that is a typical employee response.

canadiancow

Yeah... if I pay Air Canada for service, and they subcontract it out, that's still entirely on them.

Davvidd

Thats a lot of nonsense too. The passengers record shows what kind od wheelchair they need. It is not pilot radioing ahead every time and says how many wheel chairs are needed. The Ground Staff (Airline Ground Staff) has the list of passengers needing assistance and the type of assistance. They inform the third party who provides it. The Airline then confirm with the supervisor of the wheel chair provider if they have adequate number which is correlated with what the airline has. Now somewhere someone took the eye off the ball but at the end of the day it is the airlines's responsibility to take care of the passenger.
Still I have not been able to find out what happened after the passenger got off the aircraft. Was he given a wheelchair or not?

eigenvector

This is bunk: the passenger's contract is with Air Canada and the legal obligation to comply with accessibility legislation is on Air Canada. Subcontracting does not absolve AC of responsibility regardless how many indemnification clauses their overly-clever lawyers have inserted into the contracting arrangements. I would love to see them try to take up this line of argument with the DOT.

Furthermore, Air Canada failed to take all reasonable steps to mitigate the harm caused by the 3rd party's failure by standing and watching the pax crawl off the plane instead of doing literally anything to remedy the situation.

It's really disgusting that an airline employee would see a disabled person in agony with half a dozen airline employees looking on and conclude that the real problem is people don't understand that the wheelchairs are provided by a different company.

Wigg

AC takes the high road and admits it was wrong.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/briti...-act-1.7017059

flyingcrooked

If the pilots stood there and watched, doing and saying nothing, it was AC’s failure. It’s really rather pathetic for the AC person to insist otherwise and is exactly the same sort of ‘not my problem’ mindset the pilots seemed to have had.

As for the recent apology, yes this is good, but it’s not taking the high road to admit to something when it’s obvious you did it.

Wigg

Totally agree. At least they did not continue to pursue trying to shift the blame to the subcontractor (who, while at fault, has no contract with the passenger).

canadiancow

I think it was AC's failure long before that happened. That just made it worse.

warrens

I stand by what I said before -- the flight attendants are the real jerks here, because they stood by and let it happen in a seemingly unempathetic fashion.

But now we know it wasn't just them, it was also some other Las Vegas company that failed to do their job.

But at least the company that did this is out of the picture and won't get an opportunity to mess this up again for Air Canada.

yulscs

AC summoned to Ottawa to present plan to address treatment of passengers with disabilities

(no real new info in the article, but will be interesting to see what happens)

foothills county flier

Why? Airlines have had this issues for a very long time. These type of stories are the flavour of the month with Wokeism. The question people should ask, is if the rate of these issues are increasing to the number of pax flying. Lost luggage in the 80’s were a lot higher before barcoded tags were used.

songsc

With more and more combative and litigative "advocates" on their mission "to make this world a better place", I bet stories like this are becoming more and more common. While I criticize AC employees for not taking total ownership, I definitely see why they don't want to intervene directly.

This could go either way, maybe AC will overhaul its process and provide additional trainings to staff, or AC could demand that people with special needs shall notify AC well in advance.

RangerNS

If it's true FAs are not paid when the door is open, then they would on a personal level have a absolute right to refuse the work. And may be specifically instructed not to help, for off-duty liability reasons.

But this says more about how the airlines treat FAs than how the FAs don't work when they aren't working.

tracon

Almost true. F/A & pilots are paid brakes off to brakes on. Starting salary $28.85/hr. Not sure how fast it goes up.
As long as the brakes are off more than 60% of the shift, salary is higher than minimum wage.

At the end of the video is a potential modification to cabin interiors to more easily fit wheel chairs.