Rodney Hodgins has spastic cerebral palsy and requires a motorised wheelchair.
New Delhi:
A differently-abled man, who cannot walk, was forced to drag himself off a plane in Las Vegas when Air Canada could not provide him with a wheelchair. Rodney Hodgins has spastic cerebral palsy and requires a motorised wheelchair.
The 49-year-old and his wife, Deanna Hodgins, had flown to Las Vegas in August to celebrate their anniversary. When the flight attendant told them they could not arrange a wheelchair, he thought they were joking. But they insisted that he would have to get himself off the plane.
The couple said that the flight attendant asked them if they could get to the front of the plane and disembark.
“I said, ‘Of course I can’t. I’m in a wheelchair. I can’t walk'”, he told Canadian media outlets.
But in the end, Mr Hodgins, a hardware salesman from British Columbia, was forced to use his upper body strength and drag him past 12 rows of seats, while his wife held his legs.
“He (flight attendant) said it to me a second time, so that’s when I got up and I told my wife, ‘Move my legs,’ and I dragged myself to the front of the plane,” he told the media.
His wife described the devastating incident in a Facebook post saying that while both of them hurt their back and legs, it hurt a lot more emotionally.
“It took us struggling, in front of a dozen people as some looked away and others looked on with shame, to get him off that plane. He hurt his legs and I hurt my back – emotionally a lot more was hurt,” Deanna Hodgins wrote.
“My husband’s human rights were trampled on and Air Canada won’t respond to us, and never did reach out like they promised. Rod is the most beautiful human on the planet and didn’t deserve this at all,” she added.
She said they had planned the trip for eight months and made sure they took care of all requirements on their end. “Air Canada failed us in every sense.”
Air Canada said that they have apologised to Mr Hodgins and also offered him compensation for the inadequate assistance he received at the Las Vegas airport.
“We use the services of a third-party wheelchair assistance specialist in Las Vegas to provide safe transport on and off aircraft. Following our investigation into how this serious service lapse occurred, we will be evaluating other mobility assistance service partners in Las Vegas,” the statement read.
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