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Toronto activist slams Air Canada apology to customers with disabilities

A Canadian disability activist says the apology Air Canada issued to its customers with disabilities is not enough.

Maayan Ziv, a Toronto-based photographer and founder of AccessNow, took to social media to respond to the airline's apology and announcement of new accessibility measures on Thursday.

"Today is the first acknowledgement of a public apology. Still vague & indirect," she posted on X.

"[Air Canada] has violated the trust of disabled passengers and it's going to take a lot more than promises and statements to prove that they can earn our loyalty as passengers," she added in another post.

Ziv has had multiple experiences where Air Canada mishandled her wheelchair.

She went viral in 2022 after she spoke out against the major airline for breaking her wheelchair.

After deboarding a 10-hour flight from Toronto to Tel Aviv, she found her wheelchair broken and was forced to use a much-too-large one the airline provided as an alternative.

Then, earlier this year, Ziv took to social media again to blast Air Canada after she faced "argumentative" flight attendants who refused to store her wheelchair in the cabin.

The activist is not alone in these negative experiences.

Air Canada's apology comes after several recent incidents involving passengers with disabilities who spoke out against the airline for being mistreated during their travels.

One of those passengers was Rodney Hodgins, a wheelchair user from BC who said he had to drag himself off of a flight after Air Canada failed to provide him with wheelchair assistance.

Following this news, Minister of Transportation Pablo Rodriguez summoned the airline to Ottawa this week to present a plan to better serve passengers with disabilities.

"Canadians expect Air Canada to do better," Rodriguez said in a statement.

On Thursday, Air Canada CEO Michael Rousseau announced that it is accelerating the implementation of its three-year accessibility plan in order to make "travel easier and more comfortable with disabilities."

He said the airline "recognizes the challenges customers with disabilities encounter when they fly and accepts its responsibility to provide convenient and consistent service."

"Sometimes we do not meet this commitment, for which we offer a sincere apology," he noted.

The CEO said the airline will be implementing immediate measures to better serve customers with disabilities.

This includes boarding customers who require lift assistance first, storing mobility aids in the aircraft cabin, implementing enhanced training to improve employee interactions with customers with disabilities, and creating a new senior director of customer accessibility role to manage the implementation of the company's accessibility plan.

In another response on TikTok, Ziv says that while the apology is "vague," it is "the first step towards accountability."

@maayanziv_ @Air Canada apologizes to disabled passengers. Update on #RightsOnFlights ♬ original sound - Maayan Ziv

However, she says there was one thing she felt was missing from the measures Air Canada announced.

"The biggest thing that was lacking for me is what happens if something does go wrong?" asked Ziv.

"The system is still skewed in favour of corporations. People with disabilities still have to advocate for their own safety and their own rights when things go wrong."

"There is no automatic penalty for any bad behaviour or any barriers that are still in place," she added.


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