Enough is Enough! It’s Time for Strong and Effective Federal Regulation of Airline Mistreatment of Air Passengers with Disabilities
Brief by the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance To The House of Commons Standing Committee on Transport – Long Version
March 18, 2024
1. Introduction
The AODA Alliance welcomes the invitation by the House of Commons Standing Committee on Transport to give evidence at its March 19, 2024, hearings on the recurring mistreatment of airline passengers with disabilities. We commend the Standing Committee for holding these hearings. This brief identifies concrete actions needed to at long last fix this ongoing and inexcusable problem.
2. Who Are We?
The AODA Alliance has extensive experience with the design, implementation, and enforcement of disability accessibility legislation in Canada. Founded in 2005 shortly after the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act was passed, we are a voluntary, non-partisan, grassroots coalition of individuals and community organizations. Our mission is:
“To contribute to the achievement of a barrier-free Ontario for all persons with disabilities, by promoting and supporting the timely, effective, and comprehensive implementation of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act.”
To learn about us, visit the AODA Alliance website. Our coalition is the successor to the non-partisan grassroots Ontarians with Disabilities Act Committee. The ODA Committee advocated for more than ten years, from 1994 to 2005, for the enactment of strong, effective disability accessibility legislation. Our coalition builds on the ODA Committee’s work. We draw our supporters from the ODA Committee’s broad grassroots base. To learn about the ODA Committee’s history, visit the ODA Committee’s legacy website.
Beyond our work at the provincial level in Ontario, the AODA Alliance has been active, advocating for strong and effective national accessibility legislation for Canada. We have been consulted by the Federal Government and some federal opposition parties on this issue. We took active part in getting amendments made to Bill C-81, the Accessible Canada Act, as well as Bill C-22, the Canada Disability Benefit Act
The AODA Alliance has spoken to or been consulted by disability organizations, individuals, and governments from various parts of Canada on the topic of designing and implementing accessibility legislation. We have also been consulted outside Canada on this topic, most particularly, in Israel and New Zealand. In February 2023, we presented to a Select Committee of the New Zealand parliament. In June 2016, we addressed the UN annual international conference of state parties to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
3. Summary of This Brief
Air passengers with disabilities have very good reason to dread entering Canadian air space. Air travel in Canada for air passengers with disabilities is replete with far too many serious, unfair and entirely preventable disability accessibility barriers. They cannot know in advance which trips will go smoothly, and which will be replete with infuriating mistreatment.
The media has reported on several especially egregious incidents experienced by too many air passengers with physical disabilities, such as lost or destroyed wheelchairs. However, this problem extends to a broader range of people with different disabilities, such as people with vision loss.
These recurring disability barriers violate several Canadian laws, such as the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Canada Human Rights Act, the Accessible Canada Act and the Canada Transportation Act. However, these laws are not effectively implemented and enforced. They unfairly depend too heavily on air passengers with disabilities to be private accessibility cops.
Making this worse, the federal agency mandated to enforce these rights, the Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA), has a long and very poor track record. It is too close to the airline industry that it is supposed to regulate in the public interest. It is a model illustration of regulatory capture.
Despite their self-promoting and self-serving news conferences and pledges to do better, airlines and airport authorities have not made it a real priority to fix these systemic problems with effective systemic solutions. Fixing this is not rocket science. The non-partisan grass roots, AODA Alliance makes these 19 recommendations for reform to fix this mess:
- 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.
- Parliament should enact a strong, enforceable, unequivocal and comprehensive Air Passengers with Disabilities’ Bill of Rights.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- To ensure that ground assistance staff know how to properly assist air passengers with disabilities,
- 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.
- b) Airlines should be required to assign staff on a fulltime basis, not a rotating basis, to assist air passengers with disabilities.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Legislation should require serious penalties with personal liability to be imposed on senior airline and airport officials in the case of accessibility infractions.
- 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.
4. Enormity of the Problem
In Canada, air passengers with disabilities should be able to, but cannot expect consistent and reliable accessible air travel services. Some will encounter no barriers. Others will encounter barriers, from minor to major. None can predict in advance what they will face. None can do anything to avoid the mistreatment from which too many passengers with disabilities recurringly suffer.
If passengers without disabilities were subject to the same kind of treatment, or if they had to suffer from the same unpredictability and uncertainties that are typical for air passengers with disabilities, Canada’s airlines would be out of business. A sampling of news headlines gives a glimpse into this problem. Of course, the media covers only a tiny percentage of the experiences that air passengers with disabilities have suffered on Canadian airlines. Most passengers won’t take their stories to the media. For those who do, the media is not able to devote airtime and newspaper space to many if not most of the disability barriers that people with disabilities bring to their attention.
- BC Man in wheelchair reports being dropped by Air Canada crew.
Link: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/air-canada-vancouver-wheelchair-1.7015710
Hundreds of travellers with disabilities report injuries, damaged wheelchairs while flying.Link: https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.7021094
- Passenger denied boarding onto Porter flight due to electric wheelchairs’ batteries.
Link: https://globalnews.ca/news/10243432/passenger-denied-wheelchair-porter-airlines/
- Account of Air Canada destroying 30k wheelchair.
- Alberta Man waiting for wheelchair after Air Canada destroyed it.
- Disabled passenger drags himself off plane after Air Canada fails to provide wheelchairs.
- Globe and Mail op-ed about how the industry needs to improve.
These problems cannot be minimized by thinking that they are just the product of a few bad apples working at airports or airlines. To the contrary, airport and airline staff typically want to be very helpful. However, they work in a broken system, often understaffed, that is replete with recurring disability barriers.
In recent months, media coverage focused on horrific barriers experienced by some air passengers with mobility disabilities. However, this problem is not limited to passengers with those disabilities.
For example, Canadian airline accommodation services for passengers with vision loss are inconsistent and unreliable. As further explored in this brief, air passengers who are blind or who have low vision or other disabilities can never know how long it will take them to get off an airplane, and be guided through and airport, or met at the airport curb and guided in through the airport to their plane.
These problems are far from rare. Among people with disabilities, many who have travelled by air in Canada share such experiences with each other. Those cases that secure media coverage are but the tip of a huge iceberg.
If any Canadian airline or any federal regulatory official were to claim that these incidents are rare, such a claim would be strong proof of the problem. It would show how out of touch they are with the reality facing air passengers with disabilities that has existed in Canada for years. Minimizing the enormity of the problem is part of the problem.
It would be insufficient to rely on the number of formal complaints submitted to airlines or to the Canadian Transportation Agency. Many air passengers with disabilities don’t know where to complain, or that they can complain. Few would want to wait on hold for an hour or more to reach a human being on the phone when calling an airline. It is typically not worth the time and headaches to even try to complain. At airports, there typically is no obvious person to go to with complaints of any sort, much less specific disability complaints.
Many air travellers in Canada are in transit, heading out of the country. For some, Canada is merely a stopover on their route. It is not realistic to expect that such travellers will lodge complaints or legal proceedings from abroad.
Airlines don’t publicly solicit feedback from passengers with disabilities on accessibility of their services. There are no announcements to this effect included in routine emails from airlines to passengers, such as those inviting them to check in online. This is not announced at airports, among the many announcements that passengers hear every hour. It is not announced during routine announcements on airplanes, among the several minutes of routine announcements made at the start and end of every flight.
5. Recommendations
Doing more of the same will not fix this problem. Here is a series of reform recommendations to effectively tackle this problem.
a) New Independent, Arm’s-length Regulator Should Be created
The CTA has utterly failed in its mandate to effectively regulate Canadian airlines to ensure that they provide accessible air travel for passengers with disabilities. The CTA has had this mandate for decades. It has had ample time to get it right.
The CTA is correctly seen as being too close to the airlines it is supposed to effectively regulate. This is a model example of “regulatory capture”, where a regulated industry effectively captures the public agency that is supposed to regulate it in the public interest.
The 2019 enactment of the Accessible Canada Act has not corrected this problem. For example, the new accessibility regulations that the CTA enacted in early 2019 read as if they were written by the airlines themselves. They are replete with massive and indefensible loopholes. Our critique of the 2019 CTA regulations, when they were in draft form, is available in the AODA Alliance’s April 18, 2019 brief to the CTA. The CTA did not rectify most if not any of our concerns when it finalized those regulations.
When Parliament was debating Bill C-81, the proposed Accessible Canada Act in 2018 and 2019, the AODA Alliance and other key players in the disability community opposed the Federal Government’s decision to continue to entrust the CTA with the mandate to regulate disability accessibility in the airline industry. We argued that the CTA has failed to effectively discharge this mandate over the decades during which it had that statutory authority. We and others strenuously argued that it was wrong, wasteful and harmful for Bill C-81 to splinter the implementation and enforcement of the Accessible Canada Act among three agencies, the Canadian Human Rights Commission, the CTA and the CRTC.
The Federal Government wrongly rejected these concerns. In fact, before the federal Government even began its public consultation on what that bill should include with the disability community, it had already pre-decided that the CTA would retain its full and exclusive regulatory authority over disability accessibility in the airline sector, regardless of the CTA’s failed performance over previous decades.
We therefore recommend that:
- 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.
b) Canada Needs a Legislated Air Passengers with Disabilities Bill of rights
It is very commendable that in 2022, the US has adopted a bill of rights for air travellers with disabilities. That Bill of Rights summarizes the fundamental rights of air travelers with disabilities under the Air Carrier Access Act and its implementing regulation (14 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Part 382). It applies to all flights on U.S. airlines as well as on flights to or from the U.S. by foreign airlines.
The Bill outlines 10 fundamental rights:
- The Right to Be Treated with Dignity and Respect.
- The Right to Receive Information About Services and Aircraft Capabilities and Limitations.
- The Right to Receive Information in an Accessible Format.
- The Right to Accessible Airport Facilities.
- The Right to Assistance at Airports.
- The Right to Assistance on the Aircraft.
- The Right to Travel with an Assistive Device or Service Animal.
- The Right to Receive Seating Accommodations.
- The Right to Accessible Aircraft Features.
- The Right to Resolution of a Disability-Related Issue.
Canada needs a bill of rights for air passengers with disabilities, written in clear, strong, and unequivocal terms, unlike the loophole-ridden 2019 accessible air travel regulations. Parliament should itself develop this. It should not leave it to the CTA to develop it, due to the CTA’s record of failure in this area and its lack of an arms-length relationship with the airlines.
We therefore recommend that:
- Parliament should enact a strong, enforceable, unequivocal and comprehensive Air Passengers with Disabilities’ Bill of Rights.
c) Require Public Independent “Secret Shoppers” Inspection of Airlines’ Services for Air Passengers with Disabilities
Whichever public agency regulates the accessibility of air travel should be required to conduct periodic unexpected, unannounced inspection of the supports and services that airlines in Canada provide for air passengers with disabilities. It is insufficient to rely on air passengers with disabilities to file formal complaints with the CTA and to litigate against well-funded airlines, in order to enforce legal accessibility requirements. Air passengers with disabilities should not have to be the Government’s private enforcers and monitors.
We therefore recommend that:
- 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.
d) Airlines Should Notify Air Passengers with Disabilities About Supports and Services Available and How to Obtain Them
Airline supports and services for air passengers with disabilities at times appear to be the best kept secret. We fear that many if not most air passengers with disabilities do not know about all the disability-related supports and services that are available to them, and how to access them.
This is more difficult due to the fact that too often, phoning an airline can require a very frustrating hour or more of a wait on the phone, just to reach a human being. This still may not lead to contact with an airline official who is knowledgeable about all the disability-related supports and services that the airline provides.
Navigating an airline’s website to find this information can be challenging. Moreover, it would be wrong to assume that all air passengers with disabilities have a computer and know how to accessibly operate it.
Airlines don’t provide this information in standard communications with air passengers with disabilities, even when the airline is on notice that the passenger has a disability.
In striking contrast, and as a cruel irony, Air Canada notifies passengers heading to or from the US about their disability-related rights in the US. In a February 22, 2024, email to AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky about his flight the next day to the US, Air Canada included this standard notification:
“For customers with disabilities travelling to or from the United States, the U.S. has published the Airline Passengers with Disabilities Bill of Rights.”
Air Canada there provided a hyperlink to those US protections. It provides no such notification of any such supports in Canada.
The failure of Canadian airlines to ensure this obvious and simple accommodation is made all the more inexcusable by the fact that this information is not assured to be provided even when the air passenger has on file with the airline a standing request for disability accommodation tied to their specific disability, in their online profile for the passenger. For example, the airlines don’t ensure that this information is provided even when their emails, confirming a reservation, list their disability/needs.
This problem is made even worse by the fact that there is no one single provider of disability–related assistance at each airport. Entry points to those services can differ from one airline to the next, even at the same airport. Navigating this massive maze is far more than is fair to impose as a burden on air passengers with disabilities.
We therefore recommend that:
c4. 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 provide 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.
e) In Airports with Long, Barrier-Laiden Routes to Check-In Desks from the Front Door, There Should Be a Disability Check-In Desk Just Inside the Airport’s Main Entrance
In some airports, it is easy for air passengers with disabilities to get from curbside to the airline check-in desk without assistance. In others, some air passengers with disabilities must get assistance, e.g. where the distance is long, the path of travel is complex and/or there are obstacles between the front door and the check-in desk.
A prime example of a difficult route from the airport front door to check-in desks is Toronto Pearson Airport’s Terminal 1. There are many check-in desks. There is no greeter at the entry doors to help any passengers know where to go. Check-in desks are set far back from the airport entry doors. There are many obstacles such as electronic check-in kiosks and stanchions. I can feel like a maze.
For that reason, and because of recurring problems with curbside assistance, AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky came up with the idea some years ago that Air Canada and the GTAA should set up a disability check-in desk immediately inside one of the airport entry doors at Pearson Airport Terminal 1. Eventually, that check-in desk was established. It was an excellent accommodation. It made it easy to quickly get to the check-in counter from a taxi, without a taxi driver risking a fine for leaving their car unaccompanied outside the airport.
Once air passengers with disabilities checked in, there was a seating area provided right near Air Canada staff, so that air passengers with disabilities could easily speak to them if they need help while waiting, e.g. to find a bathroom. It was a huge improvement. Air Canada officials told AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky that it was welcomed by air passengers with disabilities, and by Air Canada staff.
Despite this, and with no notice to David Lepofsky, Air Canada abandoned this disability check-in counter during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2022, as air travel was substantially resuming, David Lepofsky pressed Air Canada to agree to reinstate it. Air Canada never told him that it would agree to do so.
Some time later, AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky heard through the grapevine that Air Canada had restored this disability check-in counter. Air passengers with disabilities like him were not notified of this restoration when they made reservations with Air Canada. Moreover, Air Canada does not allow passengers to check in there if they are on a flight to the US. Before the pandemic, any Air Canada air passengers with disabilities could check in there, no matter what was their destination.
Air passengers with disabilities should not have to be subject to such inconsistent and changing practices and uncertainties when it comes to such basic, obvious accommodations. Air Canada gave no formal reasons for its initially declining to restore this accommodation, or for its later restoring it only for some flights, or for its failure to alert air passengers with disabilities to its availability, through obvious avenues like standard pre-flight emails to passengers flying out of Pearson. One Air Canada staff member mentioned to David Lepofsky in the spring of 2022 that a problem with this new check-in counter was that there was no belt there to load suitcases on, and that Air Canada had to engage porters to carry suitcases to the luggage belt. If that was a motivating concern, it cannot constitute a basis for a claim that providing this hitherto successful accommodation would cause an undue hardship to an airline as massive as Air Canada.
We therefore recommend that:
- 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.
f) One Provider Should Be Required to Deliver all Curbside Assistance at an Airport
Air passengers with disabilities can face a confusing splintering of who to contact for curbside assistance when arriving at an airport. It may be that a different provider must be contacted depending on the airline on which the passenger is about to travel. The same airport can change the provider and the contact number without effectively publicizing this service. Many air passengers with disabilities likely don’t even know this service is available.
For example, for years, at Pearson Airport’s Terminal 1, the GTAA provided this service to Air Canada passengers. Without notice to the public, this was changed some years ago to Air Canada providing it. It later changed back to the GTAA, again, without appropriately notifying the disability community or the public.
Calls to the main airport phone number can result in long wait times, and reaching operators who don’t have a clue about the availability of this service, or who provides it. The result can be chaos. The 2019 CTA accessible air travel regulations contribute to this chaos, rather than solving it.
We therefore recommend that:
- Legislation should require that an airport, one well-publicized provider should provide all curbside assistance to air passengers with disabilities no matter which airline they are using for travel.
g) Except Where Impossible to Do, A Single Person Should Assist an Air Passenger with Disabilities Along Their Entire Journey Through the Airport
For many years, air passengers with disabilities had the common experience that the same ground assistance person accompanied them throughout their journey through the airport, from the beginning to the end. In more recent years, this practice was more inconsistently followed, for example, at Toronto Pearson Airport.
For some air passengers with disabilities, they can have one official guide them from curbside to the check-in desk, another guide them from the check-in desk to the beginning of security screening, a third guide them from the end of the security screening to the departure lounge, and a fourth guide them from the departure lounge to the aircraft. At times, a fifth staff member can become involved, e.g. taking them from the check-in desk to the initial seating area to wait for further assistance, and even a sixth official if they are handed off along the way from one staff member to another.
This can be jarring for air passengers with disabilities. It is tremendously inefficient. It becomes more time-consuming where one airport official must scan the passenger’s boarding pass before the passenger is passed on from one staff member to the next.
This has become even more complicated at Toronto Pearson Airport. For decades, a single airline official would accompany air passengers with disabilities from the aircraft through Canada Customs, through getting their checked luggage, and out the door to a taxi. Much more recently, and with no notice to air passengers with disabilities, at least Air Canada only escorts air passengers with disabilities until they get their luggage. They must then pass the passenger to a Greater Toronto Airport Authority GTAA official, just to walk a few meters from the exit of the luggage carousel out the airport doors to the taxi lineup. It can take longer for the Air Canada official and the GTAA official to scan the passenger’s boarding pass during this handoff then it takes to walk the short distance out the airport door to the taxis. We know of no similar wasteful practice anywhere else in the world.
Even after this recent unexplained change, some Air Canada officials will wisely and humanely agree to simply assist the passenger out the main airport doors. It is no doubt obvious to them that the current requirement is a waste of time for everyone, and just one more frustration for air passengers with disabilities.
We therefore recommend that:
- 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.
- 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.
h) Wrong to Leave Air Passengers with Disabilities Sitting in an Airport Location Where No Staff are Permanently Posted
At some airports or with some airlines, when air passengers with disabilities get assistance from the airport entrance to the aircraft, or from the aircraft to the airport’s exit, they can be left sitting for an undetermined amount of time somewhere along the route, with no airline or airport official immediately near them. A troubling illustration of this is at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport Terminal 1 when flying with Air Canada.
For example, and apart from the special new check in desk for air passengers with disabilities referred to above, after checking in at Terminal 1, air passengers with disabilities can be left to sit at a seating area that is some distance from the check-in counter. It is too far away to speak with anyone at the check-in counter.
No Air Canada official is posted there. Air passengers with disabilities must wait for an unpredictable time for Air Canada official to come over to them to assist them through the airport. If a passenger, seated there, has questions, or need help (e.g. to find a bathroom), there is no one posted there to help them.
Similarly, some air passengers with disabilities, arriving at Pearson Terminal 1 on a flight from outside Canada, may be escorted from the plane to an unstaffed seating area outside the Canada Customs area. If left there, they must wait for an unspecified amount of time until another Air Canada official comes to escort them through Customs and on the rest of the route out the airport. Here again, there is no one stationed there to ask important questions, like how long they must wait, or for help to the bathroom. Imagine hearing a passenger seated there, calling out for help to the washroom, with no Air Canada staff to hear them or to help.
We therefore recommend that:
- 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.
i) Ground Meet and Assist Staff Need to Receive Sufficient Training
It is a common experience among air passengers with disabilities that airline and airport staff, assigned to assist them, have varying levels of training and competence. Some appear to know what they are doing. Others do not. For example, a blind passenger can find it necessary to teach the airline or airport official how to properly guide a blind person. If that passenger is handed from one airline staff member to another along the journey through the airport, the passenger may find it necessary to repeat this training two or more times on a single trip through the airport.
Some airline staff, guiding air passengers with disabilities, have admitted that this is the first time they have ever guided someone with their disability. Other Air Canada officials have acknowledged that assisting air passengers with disabilities is not their fulltime job. They are rotated among different duties on different days. This is a formula for inefficiency.
Many airline passengers with vision loss report that they are relatedly asked or urged to agree to go through the airport in a wheelchair, even if they have no need for a wheelchair and can walk with no difficulty. On the same journey, an air passenger with vision loss can be asked this multiple times, even though they have told the airline several times on that journey through the airport that they neither need nor want a wheelchair. It is not clear whether airline software even allows the airline to record when a passenger says they need a guide, but no wheelchair. This is all made more difficult for air passengers with disabilities when the airline hands the same passenger off to two or more successful staff to assist them.
It should not be difficult for an airline to ensure that the staff who assist air passengers with disabilities know what they are doing and are properly trained. It would facilitate this if those staff are assigned to that job on a fulltime basis. Air passengers with disabilities should not have to train airline or airport staff on such basics.
We therefore recommend that:
- To ensure that ground assistance staff know how to properly assist air passengers with disabilities,
- 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.
- b) Airlines should be required to assign staff on a fulltime basis, not a rotating basis, to assist air passengers with disabilities.
- 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.
j) Pre-Boarding of Air Passengers with Disabilities Should Always Take Place Before Boarding Other Passengers
For decades, airlines around the world have offered the routine accommodation of pre-boarding air passengers with disabilities, on request. Yet in recent years, Canadian airlines have been very inconsistent in this practice. On some flights, the airline in fact pre-boards air passengers with disabilities as well as those with small children before all other passengers. Some do not do so unless air passengers with disabilities specifically insist on this in the moment, or remind airline staff that they are supposed to do this. Still others will board business class passengers first. Practices are inconsistent and unpredictable.
There is no good reason why airlines can’t consistently pre-board air passengers with disabilities before other passengers, along with any others needing pre-boarding.
We therefore recommend that:
- 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.
k) Air Passengers with Disabilities Should Not Always Have to Wait to Be the Last Off the Plane
In Canada, it is a very common though not universal practice that air passengers with disabilities are told that they must remain seated on the aircraft until every other passenger has deplaned. It is a standard announcement during flights. It is also commonly though not universally experienced that air passengers with disabilities are not escorted off the plane until all the crew are ready to deplane.
This further signals to air passengers with disabilities that they are a second-class population. This can be especially hard for air passengers with disabilities after a very long flight, where they are on a large plane with hundreds of passengers. It is understandable that flight attendants in some cases need a clear aircraft aisle for them to assist. For other air passengers with disabilities, such as those who can walk unassisted to the front of the plane, this delay is unnecessary. The fact that on some flights, air passengers with disabilities are allowed off the plane far more quickly, without waiting to the end, proves that it can be possible. Moreover, there is no good reason why any air passengers with disabilities must await the aircraft crew being ready to leave the plane, as sometimes happens.
We therefore recommend that:
- 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.
l) Require Mandatory video Monitoring of Handing of Wheelchairs
It is absurd that any airline in 2024 can still end up losing or damaging the wheelchair or other mobility device entrusted to them by air passengers with disabilities. What is needed is far greater accountability for those responsible for handling them, and for senior airline executives.
We therefore recommend that:
- 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.
m) Establish Rapid Action Disability Hotline
When air passengers with disabilities encounter difficulties before or during air trave l, it can be difficult to reach anyone who can help. If they want to report a problem, it is difficult to report a problem and seek a solution.
When air passengers with disabilities encounter accessibility problems, they typically need swift action, not after-the-fact apologies. If stranded at an airport with no one to help, it is typically extremely difficult if not impossible to find someone in charge to help. It can feel entirely frustrating and futile to hunt down a web complaint portal at the CTA or the Canadian Human Rights Commission or an airline or airport to seek swift action on a disability problem. It can feel like a hopeless waste of time to fill out some web form, with their complaint seemingly vanishing into cyberspace. Phoning an airline typically leads to waits of up to an hour if not more, with no option to press a number for swift access to disability help.
Even if air passengers with disabilities know about Air Canada’s so called “Medical Desk”, the staff there are only assigned to deal with a limited range of disability issues. Some Air Canada officials at that phone number proactively and commendably disregard those restraints. Others do not.
What is needed is a widely publicized fast-response disability help hotline. It would be best if it was a one-stop portal for all airlines and the relevant airport, so that air passengers with disabilities are not sent scurrying from one phone number to the next, in a frustrating effort to get to someone who can help.
We therefore recommend that:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
n) Require New Airplanes to Be Barrier-Free for Air Passengers with Disabilities
There have been accessibility improvements in new passenger airplane design. Yet, inexcusable as it seems, some new airplane features create new accessibility barriers that could easily have been prevented.
For example, in some airplane seats in some new passenger airplanes, the call button for signalling for help from flight attendants is on an inaccessible touch screen. Similarly, some seats have some or all of their controls for sitting up or reclining as touch screen buttons. These are inaccessible to blind air passengers.
For decades, these controls have been physical buttons. The move to make at least some of them as touch screen buttons, without any accessibility features, creates unjustified and entirely foreseeable new accessibility barriers.
We therefore recommend that:
- 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.
o) Mandatory Penalties Should Be Imposed on Senior Airline and Airport Officials
We believe that the recurring pattern of mistreatment of air passengers with disabilities would dramatically change if senior airline and airport officials made this a priority, and if they were held personally accountable for failures. We have no confidence in airlines and/or airports having advisory committees, accessibility policies, and lofty declarations of an intent to improve. Their long-term practice has been to apologize, to claim that infractions are rare, and then to go back to business as usual.
We therefore recommend that:
- Legislation should require serious penalties with personal liability for them to be imposed on senior airline and airport officials in the case of accessibility infractions.
p) Insufficient to Address All These Needs by Simply Requiring Each Airline to Consult the Disability Community on How They Could Do Better
It would be grossly insufficient for the House of Commons to respond to all these systemic deficiencies by requiring airlines to undertake yet another consultation with the disability community on how they could do better. This is so because:
- These recurring disability barriers are well-known within the disability community and should, by now, be well-known to the CTA and Canadian airlines. This is not rocket science. More consultations would be a formula for yet more delay before these problems are finally solved.
- It is wasteful and duplicative to ask each airline to undertake the same consultation with the disability community on the identical problems, in order to arrive at the same needed solutions, as are exemplified in this brief’s recommendations.
- It is unfair to expect the disability community to have to give the same feedback to one airline after the next. As the Federal Government acknowledged when it brought forward Bill C-22, the Canada Disability Benefit Act, people with disabilities in Canada disproportionately live in poverty. They have many immediate pressing issues to deal with, apart from again telling airlines over and over about these obvious and recurring problems.
- Large organizations tend to undertake such consultations by posting online a request for public feedback. The disability community gets a stunning number of such requests from public and private sector organizations. It does not have the time, resources and infrastructure to respond to all or even most of these. For example, the AODA Alliance has prepared and submitted this brief using the efforts of volunteers. People with disabilities could spend their entire waking hours submitting feedback to faceless online consultations, never knowing if anyone at the other end in a position of decision-making authority ever reads and acts constructively on their feedback.
We therefore recommend that:
- 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.
6. For More Information
Visit the AODA Alliance website, including its transportation page, and its Canada page that is dedicated to the Accessible Canada Act.
Contact the AODA Alliance by email at aodafeedback@gmail.com or on Twitter at @aodaalliance