Canada’s top government official in charge of helping people with physical disabilities blasted the national airline, Air Canada, for forgetting to bring her wheelchair aboard a cross-country flight last week.
Stephanie Cadieux, Canada’s chief accessibility officer, boarded an Air Canada flight from Toronto to Vancouver on Friday.
After landing in Vancouver, she realized that her wheelchair was left behind.
“This was immensely frustrating and dehumanizing — and I was furious,” Cadieux wrote in a post on LinkedIn.
Cadieux also posted an item on her X social media account, which drew a considerable response.
In response, Air Canada retrieved the wheelchair and returned it to Cadieux on Saturday.
The Post has sought comment from Air Canada.
In response to her X post, an airline official wrote that the wheelchair “has been expedited and in transit.”
The airline was “deeply sorry” about the incident, the official wrote.
“We’re investigating internally as part of our commitment to do better,” the official wrote.
“I want everyone to understand that when a person’s wheelchair is lost, so is their independence, safety, mobility, and dignity,” she wrote on LinkedIn.
Cadieux took Air Canada to task for failing to “treat these pieces of medical equipment as the essential extensions of the individual’s bodies that they are.”
“Airlines have to take responsibility and they have to do better,” she wrote.
X users responded to Cadieux’s post with similar stories about the airline’s alleged failure to accommodate those with disabilities.
“Requested a ramp at Charlottetown and they refused to set it up and had to carry me out of the plane,” one X user wrote.
Another X user wrote: “Accessibility clearly not a priority, or this would not have happened.”
Others criticized the airline for promptly responding to a complaint from a government official while ordinary citizens are allegedly made to wait longer.
“Anyone else would have been lucky to ever hear from them,” one X user wrote.
The mishap is the latest public relations disaster for Air Canada.
Earlier this month, the company grounded a pilot who shared a series of disturbing antisemitic posts following Hamas’ bloodthirsty attack on Israel, including a photo of him at a pro-Palestinian protest holding a sign that read: “Israel, Hitler is proud of you.”
This story originally appeared on NYPost
