Federal Government Must Dramatically Strengthen Its Weak Regulation of Airlines, to Stop Recurring Mistreatment of Passengers with Disabilities, Disability Advocate to Today Tell House of Commons Transportation Committee

 ACCESSIBILITY FOR ONTARIANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT ALLIANCE

NEWS RELEASE – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

Federal Government Must Dramatically Strengthen Its Weak Regulation of Airlines, to Stop Recurring Mistreatment of Passengers with Disabilities, Disability Advocate to Today Tell House of Commons Transportation Committee

 

March 19, 2024, Toronto: Today from noon to 1 pm EDT, AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky will testify in Room 225-A, the West Block Building, 111Wellington Street, Ottawa, on a panel of experts at hearings of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities. That Committee is holding hearings on what the Federal Government must do to ensure that Canadian airlines stop their recurring serious mistreatment of air passengers with disabilities. The hearings will be streamed live at https://parlvu.parl.gc.ca/Harmony/en/PowerBrowser/PowerBrowserV2?fk=12617279 or at https://www.ourcommons.ca/DocumentViewer/en/44-1/TRAN/meeting-105/notice

 

“Month after month, the media has reported on horrific incidents where an airline loses or destroys a passenger’s wheelchair, leaves a passenger with disabilities to crawl off an airplane, or strands a passenger with disabilities for hours in a Canadian airport without needed assistance,” Lepofsky will tell the House of Commons. “For airline execs to keep saying they’re sorry and promising to do better over and over accomplishes nothing. We need much stronger federal regulations and much stronger pro-active enforcement that doesn’t rely on victims of this mistreatment to have to go through lengthy bureaucratic hoops at the Canada Transportation Agency.”

 

The Standing Committee will be told that the Canada Transportation Agency (CTA), to whom the Federal Government entrusted oversight of the airlines, has failed for years to bring the airlines into line. CTA is too close to the airlines and ineffective at protecting vulnerable passengers with disabilities.

 

The AODA Alliance will explain how, after almost five years on the law books, the Accessible Canada Act, enacted in 2019 to lead Canada to become accessible to Canadians by 2040, has made no positive difference for air passengers with disabilities, as is documented on the AODA Alliance website’s Canada page. In 2018 and 2019, several disability advocates, including the AODA Alliance, pressed the Federal Government to transfer responsibility for regulating airlines’ treatment of passengers with disabilities to another federal agency that is arm’s length from the airlines. Canada continues to suffer from the Federal Government’s rejecting that wise advice.

 

“As a blind passenger, I dread entering Canadian airspace, because I never know how well or poorly Canadian airlines and airports will treat me,” said Lepofsky. “Passengers with disabilities deserve better. This is not rocket science!”

 

From 11 am to noon, right before AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky testifies, the Standing Committee will hear from top Air Canada executives. The AODA Alliance eagerly looks forward to today’s rare chance to immediately respond to the top brass at Canada’s largest airline.

 

The AODA Alliance will urge that senior airline executives and officers should be held directly accountable for the performance of their airlines on removing and preventing disability barriers that hurt passengers with disabilities. It will recommend that a new arm’s-length regulator should send secret shoppers with disabilities onto the airlines to monitor how they are treated and report publicly on their findings. It will point out how new passenger airplanes can inexcusably include new accessibility barriers. Its detailed brief offers 19 practical recommendations to fix this mess, set out below.

 

Contact: AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky, aodafeedback@gmail.com

Twitter: @aodaalliance

 

For more background check out:

 

AODA Alliance’s Recommendations to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Transport

 

  1. A new independent public agency should be created to oversee the regulation and enforcement of disability accessibility for air passengers with disabilities in Canada, with substantial safeguards to protect against regulatory capture of that public agency by the airline industry.

 

  1. Parliament should enact a strong, enforceable, unequivocal and comprehensive Air Passengers with Disabilities’ Bill of Rights.

 

  1. Legislation should be passed requiring the public agency that regulates airlines’ disability accessibility to periodically conduct unannounced inspections of the supports and services that airlines provide to air passengers with disabilities, such as secret shopper audits, with the results and findings being made public.

 

  1. Airlines should be legislatively required to alert all air passengers with disabilities, well in advance of their flight and in accessible formats, about all disability supports and services that are available from the beginning of their trip to the end, including curbside assistance when arriving at an airport. The public agency that regulates disability accessibility at airlines should be required to effectively monitor and enforce these requirements, including spot-checking content to ensure that it is comprehensive and provided in plain language. This information should be provided in multiple accessible ways, such as emails to air passengers with disabilities, printed notification in documents such as boarding passes provided to air passengers with disabilities, and regular audible and text announcements in all airports.

 

  1. In any airport where the check-in desk is difficult to reach from the front door, such as Toronto Pearson Airport Terminal 1, the airport or airline should be required to establish a disability check-in desk immediately inside a main door, and to notify air passengers with disabilities of the availability of that check-in desk. Announcing its availability on the airport’s or airline’s website is insufficient to meet this obligation.

 

  1. Legislation should require that an airport or well-publicized provider provide all curbside assistance to air passengers with disabilities no matter which airline they are using for travel.

 

  1. Legislation should require that except where impossible to do so, the airline should have one individual staff member assist a passenger with disabilities during their entire journey through the airport.

 

  1. The 2019 CTA accessible air travel regulations should be amended to preclude the practice of having some airlines pass air passengers with disabilities to the airport authority for the short distance at the end of their journey from the aircraft out the airport exit to the taxi lineup.

 

  1. Legislation should require that if airline or airport officials, assisting air passengers with disabilities through the airport, must leave them in any waiting area to wait, this must only be in a designated seating area where a permanent airline or airport official is posted, who can be asked for assistance, if needed, while they wait to finish their journey through the airport.

 

  1. To ensure that ground assistance staff know how to properly assist air passengers with disabilities,

 

  1. a) legislation should be enacted and properly enforced that effectively requires airline and airport staff who assist air passengers with disabilities to be sufficiently trained on how to assist air passengers with disabilities.

 

  1. b) Airlines should be required to assign staff on a fulltime basis, not a rotating basis, to assist air passengers with disabilities.

 

  1. c) Airlines should be required to use software that effectively enables them to record whether an air passenger with disabilities has indicated that they need no wheelchair.

 

  1. Legislation should be enacted, and effectively monitored and enforced, requiring airlines to consistently and reliably pre-board air passengers with disabilities as well as others needing pre-boarding, before any other passengers are boarded on an aircraft.

 

  1. Legislation should eliminate the systemic practice of requiring air passengers with disabilities to be the last passengers off the plane, particularly where this delay is unnecessary.

 

  1. Airlines and airports should be required to install and maintain effective video monitoring of the entire handling of a wheelchair or other mobility device from the moment that air passengers with disabilities give up possession of them to the point where the device is returned. Where an incident occurs where the device is damaged, this video should be automatically shared with the passenger and the relevant regulatory authority.

 

  1. Airlines and airports should be legislatively required to implement a one-stop disability help fast-action hotline, for air passengers with disabilities to call to seek help or report complaints.

 

  1. The relevant regulatory authority should be required to receive all requests and complaints, and action reports on what results were reached, through the disability help fast-action hotline, with overall results made public in an anonymized aggregated report.

 

  1. Airlines and airports should be legislatively required to publicize to air passengers with disabilities and to the public the availability of the disability hotline for seeking help and for lodging complaints. This should be included in all standard airline communications with air passengers, such as emails that confirm a ticket purchase or inviting online check-in. This should also be publicized in airports, such as in posters and in regular audio and text announcements in airports.

 

  1. Legislation should require the enactment of new accessibility standards for passenger aircraft design that requires such basic features as call buttons for flight attendants and controls for adjusting one’s seat to be accessible to passengers with disabilities, and not inaccessible touch screen buttons.

 

  1. Legislation should require serious penalties with personal liability to be imposed on senior airline and airport officials in the case of accessibility infractions.

 

  1. The House of Commons should not address these issues by simply requiring yet another public consultation, whether by the airlines, the CTA or other regulatory officials.