Some airline passengers with wheelchairs say they're treated like second-class citizens

Flying these days can be frustrating enough. There are the continuing troubles with delayed baggage and lineups at customs. But imagine if you also worried about being injured every time you get on a plane.

That's how a growing number of passengers who travel with wheelchairs are feeling as complaints continue to mount about the mishandling of their mobility aids.

“My wheelchair is an extension of my body,” says disability advocate Maayan Ziv.

“And when an airline treats it so carelessly… it signals to me that I don't matter.”

Ziv says she recently found out Air Canada will be replacing her $30,000 custom powered wheelchair.

It was damaged during a flight to Tel Aviv in September after being stored in the cargo hold.

Ziv can't take her expensive chair inside the cabin for safety reasons and has to use one provided by the airline to get on and off the plane.

“The wheelchair that was broken is one that American Airlines bought for me on a previous trip where they broke my wheelchair,” says Ziv.

“So this is just a cycle that repeats itself.”

Maayan Ziv's damaged wheelchair is pictured after it was stowed in the cargo hold on an Air Canada flight to Tel Aviv.

Ziv says she has experienced a half-dozen wheelchair-related incidents while travelling by plane, including two total losses.

She hates that the airlines treat her wheelchair as a piece of luggage.

Shayne De Wilde says he too endured a recent and humiliating incident on board a WestJet flight.

De Wilde is involved in an adaptive wheelchair sport called power soccer and was headed from Vancouver to Calgary last month when the airline had a problem with his electric wheelchair.

As it was being loaded into the cargo hold crews couldn't remove the headrest to fit it in upright so they so flipped the wheelchair on its side.

That caused the lights on the back of the chair to turn on.

“The aircraft can't depart with any kind of unintentional power activation in devices in the belly of the aircraft,” said WestJet spokesperson Morgan Bell.

As the plane sat on the tarmac the airline tried for nearly an hour to resolve the issue. De Wilde, who had already boarded the aircraft, says a baggage manager asked him if he knew how to disconnect the batteries. They also spoke with the wheelchair supply company but in the end De Wilde and his chair were removed from the flight, which was being delayed.

“It felt really demeaning to me, being that I'm not doing anything wrong. I'm being treated like a second-class citizen in my own country,” says De Wilde.

“It's bewildering to me how something like this still happens in 2022.”

He says he has flown many times before with that wheelchair and never encountered anything like it.

WestJet acknowledges the incident shouldn't have happened.

De Wilde thinks the airlines should ensure that all staff and contractors can properly transport wheelchairs.

The mishandling of mobility aids by airlines is something passengers with disabilities have long complained about. Some say they are hesitant to fly for fear of encountering these types of issues.

The federal transportation watchdog, the Canadian Transportation Agency, says from April 1 to Aug. 31 of this year it received 28 wheelchair-related complaints involving air travel.

“It's like experiencing a really quite violent assault on something that matters deeply to me,” says Ziv.

Disability advocate Maayan Ziv is pictured with the custom powered wheelchair that's being replaced.

There are calls for better training of ground crews and increased accountability for the airlines.

A group called the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance would like to see stepped-up enforcement and spot audits.

In September, both the federal Minister of Disability Inclusion Carla Qualtrough and Transport Minister Omar Alghabra met with officials from Air Canada and the Canadian Transportation Agency to discuss the issue.

“We expect the CTA, Air Canada, and other service providers ensure that their services are inclusive of persons with disabilities and are in accordance with the guidelines outlined in the Accessible Canada Act,” said Qualtrough in a statement sent to CTV News.

Some disability advocates are going so far as to call for changes requiring airlines to allow passengers to bring their personal wheelchairs into the cabin and sit in them instead of stowing them in cargo.

An organization called All Wheels Up has conducted crash tests of wheelchairs and investigated ways to safely secure them to the floor of an aircraft.

U.S. group All Wheels Up is proposing personal wheelchairs be taken into the cabin and secured to the floor instead of being stowed in cargo hold.

Earlier this year, U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg pledged to work towards requiring airlines to allow passengers to stay in their personal wheelchairs.

“We know this won't happen overnight, but it is a goal that we have to work to fulfill,” said Buttigieg.

“I would love to be able to sit in my own wheelchair on the aircraft,” said Ziv. “I can sit on a train, on cruise ships. In fact, there's actually no other form of transportation where I have to get out of my wheelchair.”

With files from CTV News Vancouver's Shannon Paterson