() – For most people, arriving at a Las Vegas vacation represents excitement, mixed with a bit of trepidation.
But for Rodney Hodgins, who traveled last August, his flight to the city was such a traumatic experience that he says it ruined the rest of his trip.
Hodgins, who uses wheelchairsays he had to drag himself down the aisle with the help of his partner after airport mobility assistance staff failed to show up to assist him. He says Air Canada staff told him to disembark on foot — even though he can’t walk — so they could turn the plane around.
Hodgins, who suffers from spastic cerebral palsy, can support his own weight but cannot move his legs.
Hodgins and his wife Deanna were flying from Prince George, British Columbia, to Vancouver, and from Vancouver to Las Vegas in late August. It was a special occasion: their first wedding anniversary.
The couple are set to get married in 2022 in Las Vegas, and this was meant to be a chance to enjoy “Sin City” without wedding plans or stress. Hodgins had booked six days in a suite at the luxurious Delano Las Vegas hotel, as a surprise for Deanna. “He had planned the whole trip; he was heartbroken when it fell through,” she says.
“We thought he was joking”
The narrow aisles of commercial passenger aircraft often do not accommodate wheelchairs on board—although one new innovative idea The problem is not addressed—so passengers are typically asked to leave their chair at the aircraft door, where it is loaded into the cargo hold. Passengers are then transferred to their seats in an aisle chair—a narrow and notoriously uncomfortable device—by airport assistance staff. Upon landing, the reverse occurs.
Because of his condition, Hodgins often requires two or three mobility assistance staff to assist him in the aisle chair, and the couple say they informed Air Canada of his needs when they booked the assistance along with their flights eight months before their trip.
But while the first flight went as planned, when the second one landed Hodgins says no one showed up to help him off the plane for 20 minutes.
“When we landed in Las Vegas we were excited. It was Vegas, it was hot, it looked beautiful, we were ecstatic,” says Deanna Hodgins.
But then reality hit.
The couple says that about 20 minutes after landing, while they were in their seats in row 12, watching the power chair being taken out of the cargo hold and onto the moving bridge, a flight attendant approached and asked them to go to the front of the plane. The reason? They had to prepare for the next flight, she said.
“At first we thought he was joking because everyone was in such a good mood,” says Deanna Hodgins.
“He was the flight attendant – he was there the whole way – and he saw my husband being brought onto the flight with an aisle seat. So we laughed, thinking it was absurd.”
But the assistant was not joking.
“He insisted that the plane had to turn around and had another flight, and that we had to get off,” he says.
“We panicked. What do you mean we had to get down? We can’t, his wheelchair is on the gangway. We didn’t know how we were going to do it.”
But, they say, the flight attendant continued to insist.
The couple said that while they pointed out that Hodgins couldn’t walk, a mobility aid person arrived to help with the aisle chair — the only person during the incident who treated them kindly, they say.
Hodgins needs more than one person to maneuver him into the chair, but he says this employee told him no one else was coming. “I called twice on the radio, no one is there,” he told them.
The couple decided to wait, assuming someone else would arrive. Meanwhile, the cleaning crew was getting off the plane and the cabin crew appeared to be discussing what to do with the pilots and staff on the tarmac.
Finally, when the cleanup crew got to their row, the Hodginses still felt pressure to move, Deanna Hodgins said. “They were like, ‘We have to turn the plane around. ’ That’s when Rodney finally said, ‘We’re going to have to get off this plane somehow. I’m going to have to crawl. ’”
“There was no way I could get to the front of the plane because, of course, I can’t walk,” Hodgins tells . “I was pretty upset, but I told my wife to help me stand up. I can’t really move my legs, so my wife had to go on the floor and help me.” Hodgins leaned against the seats on either side of the aisle while his wife moved his legs. With her on the floor and him dragging himself along with his arms, they made it all the way through the 12 rows.
But when they reached the kitchen area in front of the first row, there was nothing to hold on to and still no sign of any support staff. “I had to put my wife in front of me and hold on to her shoulders,” he says.
They called the employee who had the aisle chair to bring it over (he had been sitting further back on the plane while they were fighting their way to the front) and managed to get Rodney into it, with Deanna’s help, so he could get off the plane and into his power chair, which had been waiting for them at the door of the plane the whole time.
The incident had repercussions on their trip to Las Vegas, they say, as Hodgins suffered physical injuries. “He couldn’t even shower for three days,” Deanna says.
In an email from Air Canada sent to the Hodgins in response to their story, which read, the airline says that “based on the information we currently have, we have to regrettably admit that Air Canada violated the disability regulations.”
Air Canada said in a statement sent to that it attempted to email and then called the couple to apologize and offer compensation to Hodgins for her “unpleasant travel experience.”
“The level of care that should have been provided at the destination airport was not. We utilized the services of a third-party wheelchair assistance specialist in Las Vegas to provide safe transportation on and off the aircraft. During our investigation into what occurred, we determined that the flight attendants followed procedures, including offering assistance that was declined. Following our investigation into how this serious service failure occurred, we will be evaluating other mobility assistance service partners in Las Vegas.”
The airline declined to provide specific details in response to ‘s questions about the Hodgins allegations.
Officials with the Canadian Transportation Agency are investigating the incident, the agency told .
Canadian Transport Minister Pablo Rodriguez asked Air Canada to meet with him and Canada’s Minister of Diversity, Inclusion and Persons with Disabilities this week.
“I was horrified to learn of yet another incident on an Air Canada flight. All Canadians should be treated with dignity and respect. Period,” Rodriguez said in a statement, adding that the airline “must come up with a plan to address this.”
Deanna Hodgins says a flight attendant offered to carry their bags, but insists they were not offered any other assistance. “They did not offer to help move him in any way, nor did they help us move him, at any point.”
And while Air Canada appears to be blaming the flight attendants, the Hodginses point to the airline as being responsible.
“It wasn’t the transport crew that told us to get off the plane,” says Deanna Hodgins.
The airline sent them $2,000 in flight credits, but the couple was hoping for something considerably cheaper: time.
“Rodney was hoping someone from Air Canada would have a decent conversation with him to make him feel human again,” Deanna says.
“Just to say, ‘Hey, this is how you failed. And this can’t happen again. And these are the policies we’d like you to put in place, because you can apologize all you want, but until you do something, it doesn’t mean much. ’”
Now, Hodgins wants to use the incident to raise awareness about what people with disabilities — roughly one in six of the world’s population — have to deal with while flying.
He also wants to campaign for more effective sanctions against airlines and airports that fail to provide passengers with special assistance, suggesting that if passengers have not been helped off the plane within 15 minutes of arriving at the gate, airlines should be fined.
Rodney Hodgins celebrated his 50th birthday this month, but the couple, who try to travel as much as possible, cancelled their trip. “We were really scared that something would go wrong on the flight,” says Deanna.
“We didn’t want special treatment. We just wanted to fly, and we just wanted decent treatment. Nobody asks for special treatment, just simple assistance.”
‘s Paula Newton contributed reporting.
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