A second disabled B.C. man has come forward to share his Air Canada horror story after hearing about another B.C. man who had to drag himself off a plane in Las Vegas.
Ryan Lachance, a professional standup comedian, was on his way back to the Lower Mainland from the Halifax Comedy Festival in early May. When he landed at the Vancouver International Airport, he said he was expecting an eagle lift to help get him out of his passenger seat and off the plane.
An eagle lift is an apparatus designed to transport disabled people from a passenger seat to a wheelchair.
What he got instead was two Air Canada employees trying to manually lift him into an aisle wheelchair.
“They didn’t have me buckled in properly, and I kept sliding down the seat. My feet kept getting caught in the aisle,” he told Global News.
“The (worker) behind me was not paying attention to his partner. His partner pulled my legs out and pulled me right off the seat and I landed on the floor. I landed really hard.”
After the fall, Lachance said over the next 45 minutes the duo tried to get him into the aisle wheelchair and down the aisle.
“I bruised my back and the whole time my caregiver and myself were saying, ‘You are not doing this right. We need an eagle lift,’ and they just kept trying to pick me up, and repeatedly, I would slip and land back down on the ground over and over again,” he said.
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The staff then decided to get an eagle lift, and after the lift arrived, it took about five minutes to get off the plane.
“I felt like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, just clicking my heels thinking, ‘I just wish to go home.’ It was a long flight, I had to go from Halifax to Toronto, then to Vancouver,” Lachance said.
“All the joy I got from doing the Halifax Comedy Festival evaporated.”
The standup comedian said once he was finally able to get home, he was relegated to his bed for a few days to recover.
“I had bruises and my whole body was sore — felt like I was in an MMA fight,” he said.
Lachance said he has filed an official complaint with Air Canada regarding the experience but was only able to file it a few days ago.
“I had to get a medical release from my doctor for all of my medical history.… It took quite a long time,” he said.
“This is not the first time that has happened to me. This also happened when I flew into Penticton, I got dropped there as well (with Air Canada).”
Lachance said he talked to an Air Canada employee recently and filed a verbal complaint with the airline company.
“I’ve gotten a lot of ‘sorry’ (from Air Canada) but sorry doesn’t really mean anything when I got through something like this. It is just a word people say because it is what is expected,” Lachance said.
Lachance said he wants two things from Air Canada: for it to change its policies around disabled people’s accessibility and for it to train its staff properly.
“Use the eagle lift when people request it. I am not out for any financial gain, I am speaking out for the people that do not have a voice. If this is happening to me, it is happening to other people,” he said.
“If I share my story other people may have the courage to speak up and things might change.”
Air Canada has declined an interview regarding Lachance’s incidents but a spokesperson did say in an email that “This customer did not receive the level of service we normally provide.”
“We are in communication with him in order to resolve this matter,” they said.
The other disabled B.C. man, who had to reportedly drag himself off of an Air Canada flight in Las Vegas, motivated Lachance to share his story.
Prince George resident Rodney Hodgins also said he’s going to push for changes to ensure no other disabled person endures what he experienced.
Hodgins, 49, who can’t walk due to spastic cerebral palsy, said he originally thought the flight attendant was joking when he told him he would have to get himself off the airplane, but was shocked and angry when he was asked a second time to disembark without support.
The hardware salesman said he was forced to use the strength of his upper body to pull himself down the airplane aisle, while his wife, Deanna, held his legs, which cannot move.
Hodgins said the experience, which occurred this past August when he and his wife were travelling to celebrate an anniversary, left him feeling violated.
On Friday, The Canadian Press reported Air Canada acknowledged it violated Canadian disability regulations in the incident with Hodgins.
— with files from The Canadian Press
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