Disability awareness activist Andrew Gurza says Air Canada damaged his power wheelchair and delivered it to him “sopping wet” after his flight to San Francisco.
Gurza tweeted about his experience on Wednesday, calling out the airline for the damage to his chair.
“Air Canada left my $30,000 [CAD] power wheelchair sopping wet yesterday on my flight from Toronto to San Francisco. They also mangled my power joystick to the point where I almost couldn’t drive it. Then, they had the audacity to get angry at me because I was angry,” Gurza wrote. “After all that, all they want to offer me is a $500 voucher to fly with them again. The amount of stress and upset that I have been put through so far is unconscionable and completely unnecessary.
“Here are the pictures of how my $30K piece of equipment was brought to me; wet, sopping and mangled. @AirCanada better make this right. I’m waiting,” he continued, alongside pictures of the damaged chair.
Gurza explained the situation to Newsweek, saying that the airline said his chair was wet due to rain.
“Why wouldn’t they put the chair in a container is what I’d like to understand. They didn’t even bother to use a tarp,” Gurza said.
The joystick damage, he said, was due to mishandling while fitting the wheelchair into the cargo hold. In addition, the custom seating was damaged as well, making Gurza unable to sit upright and leaving him in pain while using the chair.
“I have a problem every single time I fly. It doesn’t matter which airline—every time I fly. It makes me so angry. It is totally unacceptable and disrespectful of disabled people,” Gurza told Newsweek. “I want Air Canada to know that a $500 voucher is a slap in the face for damaging what is essentially my legs. They need to create policies with disabled leaders so this never happens again.”
Air Canada’s Media Team told Newsweek that representatives from the airline met with Gurza “immediately” at the airport, and have sent a mobile repair team to visit his hotel to fix the wheelchair. Gurza told Newsweek that a technician had indeed been dispatched on Wednesday, but that he couldn’t fix it, and told Gurza to wait until returning home to fix the chair.
Courtesy of Andrew Gurza
Air Canada said that incidents like what happened to Gurza’s chair are rare. The Media Team told Newsweek that in 2019, 1.38 percent of customers—710,700 passengers—were in a wheelchair.
“The vast, vast majority of these customers travelled normally. This is because we commit considerable resources to assist these customers, for example, we plan to schedule this winter approximately 182 customer service agents on any given day mainly to moving wheelchairs at our Toronto-Pearson global hub airport,” the airline said.
“We fully recognize the importance of mobility aids for customers and have prescribed processes for transporting them safely. Regrettably, given the volume carried, there are rare occasions when we do not meet our service levels,” it continued.
On October 27, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) reported that Air Canada would cover the cost of a new wheelchair for AccessNow CEO Maayan Ziv. Ziv, a Toronto resident, flew to Tel Aviv for an accessibility conference in September, when her chair, also valued at $30,000 CAD (about $22,250 USD) was damaged.
Ziv told Toronto CityNews that the damage to her chair was “appalling,” and said that her wheelchair was wrapped in bubble wrap to protect it during transport. In addition, on the flight back to Toronto, her wheelchair wasn’t waiting for her—it had never been loaded onto the plane, she told CityNews.
Air Canada provided a temporary wheelchair, and committed to paying either for the repairs or a replacement chair in early October, the CBC reported. The airline told the outlet that “substantial claims” take time to process. Ziv says she opted for a replacement chair, but told the CBC it could take months to find all the parts to customize the new chair.
Air Canada addressed the delay to Newsweek, and confirmed that it was covering the costs for a new chair and had provided a temporary chair in the meantime.
“With respect to Ms. Ziv, Air Canada similarly arranged immediately for a mobile repair team to attempt to repair her chair. As well, we agreed to cover the repair or replacement costs, but this took extra time because third parties were involved and also Ms. Ziv was out of the country for a month,” Air Canada told Newsweek.
