WestJet chief executive
“To our guests who didn’t have a good travel experience with us, we are sincerely sorry, and we are committed in doing better," von Hoensbroech said during a
More than 99.9 per cent of the carrier's 260,000-plus customers who required support last year — roughly 700 each day, the vast majority of whom used mobility aids — had a good experience, he said.
"Every case that goes wrong is one too many," the CEO said.
The appearance followed a committee hearing last week that saw lawmakers take
Rousseau acknowledged mistakes, and pointed to an expedited accessibility scheme announced in November along with new measures to improve the travel experience for hundreds of thousands of passengers living with a disability.
Multiple incidents have surfaced at Canadian airlines over the past year.
A B.C. man with spastic cerebral palsy was forced to drag himself off of an
"Everyone’s always very sorry and very committed to doing better whenever these things happen, but these high-profile incidents continue to plague Canadian airlines," Conservative MP
“Thoughts and prayers are no longer acceptable."
Von Hoensbroech highlighted steps WestJet is taking to boost accessibility. These include a process to confirm to customers that mobility aids were loaded into the cargo hold and procedures to properly store those devices on board across its whole network. Both measures are set for rollout "very soon," he said, on top of plans for clearer communication about what flights cannot accommodate mobility aids beyond a certain size.
Advocates insist tougher rules and enforcement are needed to reduce accessibility barriers.
“As a blind passenger, I dread entering Canadian airspace, because I never know how good or bad will be my treatment,"
“Month after month, the media has reported on inexcusable and recurring incidents where an airline loses or destroys a passenger’s wheelchair, leaves a passenger with disabilities to crawl off an airplane, or strands a passenger with disabilities for hours in a
Current regulations codify important principles but fail to spell out financial consequences for breaches, said
"The culprit is the perennial problem of inadequate enforcement and inadequate legislation," he told the committee.
Penalties against large airlines over disabilities violations occasionally top
Last week, the
The agency’s enforcement team tracks complaints to scan for a pattern of contraventions, and looks to impose fines when it sees a problem as “systemic,”
Lukacs also called for a government mandate to collect and post statistics on disability-related complaints and mishandled mobility aids, as the
WestJet received and investigated about 200 complaints related to accessibility last year, some involving damage to mobility aids — "quite small numbers relative to the very large amount of passengers with (disabilities) that we carry," said
NDP MP
“WestJet’s CEO said some of the right things, but there's very little transparency required by the current regulations,” Bachrach said in an interview.
“It shouldn’t be up to airlines to voluntarily share data."
He called on the federal government to back stricter rules and a crackdown by regulators, who he said remain "reluctant to levy fines" that are big enough to deter breaches.
One area of possible reform is to expand the one-person-one-fare rule to international flights from domestic ones, where it has been required since 2020. The policy ensures passengers who need an attendant or service dog pay for only one ticket.
Von Hoensbroech took pains to stress the complex, integrated nature of air travel.
"If someone books a WestJet ticket but it is operated on an Air France flight — and Air France doesn't have this type of rule — then this creates confusion," he said, arguing that rules must be consistent between jurisdictions.
However, critics say
As for the case of the ex-Paralympian, airport congestion in
“There's an approved process on how to do it," he said, but called her experience "humiliating" nonetheless. "I don’t like that either, but it was the next best option."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published
Companies in this story: (TSX:TRZ)
© 2024 The Canadian Press. All rights reserved., source