Disabled Man Forced To Drag Himself Off Plane After Air Canada Fails To Provide Wheelchair

A 49-year-old man with spastic cerebral palsy was forced to drag himself off a plane when the staff of an Air Canada flight failed to provide a wheelchair for him.

Rodney Hodgins, a hardware salesman from British Columbia, had taken the flight to Las Vegas in August. However, the incident has just come to light. His wife, Deanna Hodgins, took to Facebook to share their horrific experience.

Rodney Hodgins requires the assistance of a motorised wheelchair for better mobility. He had reportedly modified his wheelchair to fit in the cargo area in advance of the flight.

But when the plane landed in Las Vegas, the flight attendant told the couple they were unable to get a wheelchair on board because there was not enough time before the plane had to be made ready for takeoff again.

The flight attendant then asked Hodgins to pull himself off the plane alone. "I said, 'Of course I can't. I'm in a wheelchair. I can't walk,'" he told the Canadian Press.

But he had to eventually use his upper body strength to drag himself past 12 rows of seats while his wife held his legs.

"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 ... my husband's human rights were trampled on and Air Canada won't respond to us, and never did reach out like they promised," Deanna Hodgins wrote in the Facebook post.

Air Canada has now issued an apology and admitted that Rodney did not get adequate support on board the flight.

"We use the services of a third-party wheelchair assistance specialist in Las Vegas to provide safe transport on and off aircraft," the statement read. "Following our investigation into how this serious service lapse occurred, we will be evaluating other mobility assistance service partners in Las Vegas."

In August this year, Air Canada was forced to issue an apology after two of their passengers were made to sit in seats that had been stained by vomit.

This incident took place onboard a flight from Las Vegas, US, to Montreal, Canada. It came to light after one of the passengers, Susan Benson, also wrote about it on Facebook.

Benson said that when she boarded the plane, she saw that "there was a bit of a foul smell, but we didn't know at first what the problem was. Apparently, on the previous flight, someone had vomited in that area. Air Canada attempted a quick clean-up before boarding but clearly wasn't able to do a thorough clean".

The "quick clean-up" that Benson referenced was when the airline "placed coffee grinds in the seat pouch and sprayed perfume to mask the smell".

Recently, passengers on a Delta Airlines flight had to endure an eight-hour delay after a passenger suffered a bout of extreme diarrhoea while the flight was airborne. The Delta flight headed to Barcelona had just left Georgia and was over Virgina when the pilots called off the journey amidst the diarrhoea outbreak.

The situation was deemed a "biohazard issue", and the aircraft had to make an emergency landing at the Atlanta airport.

A similarly bizarre incident was reported onboard an easyJet flight. The flight headed to London Gatwick was postponed after one of the passengers onboard defecated on the toilet floor.

The passengers had to spend an additional night in Tenerife, Spain after the flight was delayed due to the incident. A video that has gone viral on social media shows the pilot making an announcement about the halt, explaining the reason behind the cancellation.

He could be heard saying that someone found it "rather entertaining...to defecate on the front toilet, so we're now staying the night here".

"We are now going to get everyone off... and organise hotels, then we'll fly back tomorrow morning," he added.