It wasn’t so much being kicked in the back that bothered me. It was Air Canada’s extreme corporate reaction to smother the event and make me feel like an idiot.
And to tell the truth, I wasn’t kicked in the back—not directly, anyway.
I had had spinal surgery on May 1, and left for a trip to Eastern Europe with my wife a month later. The surgeon assured us that all would be well, so who were we to blow against the wind.
In Toronto, transferring to Prague, we were met by a wheelchair attendant. The chairs at some airports, including Toronto, have a propulsion machine called a DANE. It is very clever and very useful, helping the pusher to thrust their human cargo up the jetway.
In this case the DANE failed, and the exasperated attendant sought to resolve the issue by taking a wild kick at the machine.
I was, as you can imagine, rather disturbed at this and let out a cry. The attendant gave me a sharp look in return as he tried some other manoeuvres to get us going. Finally he succeeded, and as we pushed on forward he simply let it be known that “I had no idea your spine was the problem.” An interesting defence.
Once at the top, I transferred to the long-distance cart and headed to the international terminal and lounge to wait for our flight. Once at the gate, the agent immediately identified us (word of this event having raced across the airport campus) and asked if I needed medical attention. I did not, but it was good of him to ask. In fact, the entire incident was one of shock and not of horror or pain.
However, eight hours is a long time to ponder. I landed in Prague keen to file a complaint, seeking nothing monetary, but anticipating an apology and assurance that the next training sessions would place greater emphasis on the chapter in the manual called “Reasons not to kick wheelchair passengers in the back.”
Air Canada does pride itself on their attention to their disabled clientele, a pride that is often warranted, but very often misplaced. I submitted my complaint.
And I did get a reaction.
Not from any empathetic accessibility officer, but from a rottweiler lawyer who had turned my complaint into a claim. He was asking for a litany of medical reports and a signature on a non-disclosure agreement that would have been more appropriate after a weekend on Epstein Island.
No hint of empathy whatsoever. Simply a mandate for a legal cog to get rid of me.
I demurred. I told my side of the story and suddenly he held an “inquiry”; not one that I was allowed to see, of course, but one that determined that I had been histrionic, economical with the truth, and had embellished it for some unknown reason. My wife, of course, was not invited to the “inquiry” being considered somehow biased, in complete contrast to the cherubic employees whose testimony was accepted without question.
The offer was 35,000 Aeroplan points if I signed the NDA. Now 35,000 pieces of Air Canada’s rapidly devaluing scrip is a bit of a joke, as even the lawyer must have realized, and certainly not worth the ignominies promised in the NDA.
I Googled the lawyer’s name, and immediately came a report from a UK couple who had been disadvantaged in their trip. His response was dismissal of their points and a complete shutdown.
All of which is good for Air Canada, I suppose, but terrible for the disabled passengers. My complaint has still not been addressed; only their attempt to escalate it to a claim, which I have never made, and an offer to settle for some paltry handful of scrip which, given that I have never made a claim, I am not accepting.
Nor am I signing a gag order.
Air Canada: you can do better.
Globetrotting appears exclusively in Respect. For more Max, visit www.maxglobetrotter.com