‘No wheelchair’: Advocate says laws governing mobility aids on flight not enough

After yet another flight experience that she describes as traumatic, accessibility advocate Maayan Ziv is once again calling for change and for the air travel rights of people with disabilities to be recognized and respected.

Last September, Ziv’s custom motorized wheelchair was damaged beyond repair on an Air Canada flight to Tel Aviv.

While the airline has since replaced the chair, Ziv says she has made some changes to the way she travels to avoid possibly jeopardizing her indispensable mobility device.

“I’ve been travelling with a much more compact, foldable travel chair that’s specifically designed to allow people like myself to fold it up, to store it in the cabin, to remove the batteries — it fits the dimensions of the majority of closets on board,” she explains.

“I just thought if I could travel like this, I could probably protect my mobility better.”

She adds that the portable chair is far from comfortable, but she’d rather suffer the discomfort than take any risks with stowing her wheelchair in the plane’s cargo hold.

“There are laws that state that when flying to or from the U.S., wheelchairs that are collapsible and of a certain dimension should take priority to be stored in the closets on board in the cabin,” she says.

RELATED: Toronto woman calls for change after wheelchair destroyed on Air Canada flight

On a recent trip to Austin, Texas, however, she faced an uphill battle with airline staff, despite trying to call ahead to clarify that her wheelchair would be allowed in the cabin.

“I’d called the medical desk, and they told me that they couldn’t provide an answer to me and that would have to be decided upon at the airport. When I got to the airport to check in, they told me I would have to speak to someone at the gate. When I got to the gate, they told me I’d have to speak to the flight attendant,” she says.

When she got on board, the flight attendant she dealt with had stowed her own belongings in the cabin closet.

“I did face quite an argumentative flight attendant who told me that these decisions shouldn’t be made upon boarding … she was furious. Reluctantly she did eventually remove her suitcase and her purse from the closet to make priority room for my chair to be folded and fit in the cabin closet,” says Ziv.

On the way back from Austin, however, Ziv says she was in for an even ruder surprise.

“The flight attendant had been briefed because there was a report filed by the previous flight attendant, and she basically was ready to fight,” she says. “I showed up, and she didn’t address me by name. She said, ‘hi, no wheelchair.’ That was her first words to me.”

Ziv tried to plead her case and explain that she had previously been through a bad experience with checking her wheelchair as cargo.

“I said, ‘listen, I’m very anxious. I am hoping that you’ll take my wheelchair and store it in the cabin. I read that there are laws that allow me to do this … I’ve had broken wheelchairs in the past; I’m just trying to protect my mobility.’ She said, ‘we’re not going to fight about it, and if we break it, we’ll buy you a new one,'” recalls Ziv.

RELATED: Air Canada’s transport of wheelchair was ‘unorganized mess’: Accessibility advocate

Gabor Lukacs, the founder of the advocacy group Air Passenger Rights, confirms that the situation Ziv faced is in contravention of the law she was citing.

“The starting point of the law concerning mobility aids is that for a person with disabilities, their mobility aids are the extension of the person’s body,” he explains.

“You don’t require passengers to jeopardize their legs or hands. You don’t put passengers with disabilities in a situation when they have to jeopardize their mobility aids … you don’t put a wheelchair in the cargo hold unless it is impossible to put it in the cabin or unsafe to do so.”

He adds that airlines are obliged to make room for the mobility aid and disassemble, package and reassemble it if required, with a duty to return the device without delay upon arrival at the destination.

“[They] have to make every reasonable effort to permit a person with a disability using a walker or a manual folding wheelchair to store it on board the aircraft,” he reiterates.

In a statement to CityNews, Air Canada says, “with respect to this case, the U.S. regulations being cited requiring mobility aids be stored in the cabin apply only to manual wheelchairs and do not apply to aircraft of fewer than 100 seats. The customer’s chair, in this case, is battery powered, and we fly Toronto-Austin with a 76-seat Embraer aircraft.”

Ziv feels the number of passengers should not be a limiting factor if the closets are big enough to accommodate the wheelchair. In addition, she feels the fact that she was allowed to keep the wheelchair in the cabin on the flight to Austin proves it is not a safety hazard in a smaller airplane.

She adds that the portable wheelchair she uses is purpose-built to stow onboard. It has a removable battery and power source — which she offered to dismantle and stow in the cargo hold in order to comply with regulations — but it fell on deaf ears.

“[Air Canada’s] response in itself to me is just indicative of the type of culture we’re dealing with. Why are we negotiating based on these details? It should be the utmost priority for any airline to protect all of its passengers and not start to stipulate what type of plane, what country, or what type of mobility device this is. This is my extension of my body,” she says.

“I just find that we’re missing the point when we’re getting into the fine print. The point is to say, ‘how can we confirm and assure that every person with or without a disability is protected equitably in air travel?'”

Lukasc opines that staff are not sufficiently trained to deal with both conflict and people with disabilities who are in an extremely vulnerable position during travel.

“The second problem is the mentality … the rules are needed to have a clear standard of service. But as much as I like to focus on the rule-based, rights-based approach, part of the training and part of the approach I would encourage is more an empathy-based, human relations-based approach,” he says.

Ziv says that was sorely missing during her ordeal, which greatly heightened her travel anxiety.

“I was very shaken by the experience because I’m anxious as it is — I’m going through a process that is not equitable, and I’m just basically trying to protect my independence. I’m not faced with any person who shows up with empathy, I’m responded to in this very abrasive, angry way that treats me like a problem rather than a person,” she says.

“By the time that I got to Pearson, I was just so exhausted by it that at customs, I couldn’t remember where I came from. Although I thought I was coping just fine, it really demonstrated to me that I was under a tremendous amount of anxiety and that it was all just due to human beings who didn’t choose kindness.”

She feels people with disabilities are being sent a message that they shouldn’t travel and are not wanted on board airlines.

“People with disabilities are not only passengers, but we’re customers. We are paying to receive service, and we deserve to be treated with respect and dignity, and I think that we don’t have that currently,” she says.

“[We] are treated so poorly and are faced with so much anxiety that people are afraid to travel. They’re limiting their own opportunities because the systems are currently failing us.”

She adds that the laws that are in place, simply don’t go far enough.

“I just feel like the laws don’t do what they’re meant to do, which is protect people with disabilities in every instance,” she says.