Air Canada: US airline forces disabled man to drag himself off plane after it fails to provide a wheelchair

Air Canada has been forced to apologise after a man with spastic cerebral palsy was forced to drag himself off a flight after the airline failed to provide a wheelchair. Rodney Hodgins, 49, a hardware salesman from British Columbia who requires the use of a motorised wheelchair, had to use his upper body strength to haul himself past 12 rows of seats, with his wife holding his legs.

In her Facebook post, his wife Deanna Hodgins said the event left the couple devastated. The couple were flying to Las Vegas to celebrate their anniversary in August.

Ms Hodgins wrote on Facebook that when the plane landed, the flight attendant told the couple there wasn’t time to get a wheelchair on board before the plane had to prepare for take-off again. The attendant told Mr Hodgins that he would have to pull himself off the plane alone.

At first the couple thought she was joking but she then repeated the request. Mr Hodgins told the Canadian Press: “I said, ‘Of course I can’t. I’m in a wheelchair. I can’t walk’”. In the Facebook post his wife said the couple had planned the trip for eight months but “Air Canada failed us in every sense.”

She wrote: “It took us struggling, in front of a dozen people as some looked away and others looked on with shame, to get him off that plane … he hurt his legs and I hurt my back – emotionally a lot more was hurt … my husband’s human rights were trampled on and Air Canada won’t respond to us, and never did reach out like they promised. Rod is the most beautiful human on the planet and didn’t deserve this at all.”

Air Canada has since acknowledged that Mr Hodgins had received inadequate support. In a statement the airline said: “We use the services of a third party wheelchair assistance specialist in Las Vegas to provide safe transport on and off aircraft. Following our investigation into how this serious service lapse occurred, we will be evaluating other mobility assistance service partners in Las Vegas.”

Mr Hodgins said he was offered a C$2,000 flight voucher by the airline, but said compensation would not “fix the problem”. He added: “I just wanted to make a difference for somebody else so they don’t have to experience that again.”