Oh Canada

That’s odd. Aren’t the wheelchair personnel airport contractors that the gate agents request prior to an airplane’s arrival?

As in, did the gate agent tell the FA there were no wheelchairs available?
 
In October, Air Canada lost the wheelchair of Canada’s chief accessibility officer Stephanie Cadieux, who described the experience as “immensely frustrating and dehumanizing”.
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:oops:

This one from a few years ago kinda makes me chuckle:

A sleeping passenger was left on board an Air Canada flight earlier this month hours after the plane had landed and the crew disembarked.

Tiffani O'Brien, of Ontario, Canada, said she fell asleep in an empty row of seats on her short flight home from Quebec City to Toronto. She awoke hours later around midnight still strapped to her seat and all alone on a cold, dark plane.
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abcnews.go.com

Air Canada investigating after passenger left asleep on empty plane

A sleeping passenger was left on board an Air Canada flight earlier this month hours after the plane had landed and the crew disembarked.
abcnews.go.com abcnews.go.com
 
This isn't directly related to wheelchairs, but a wise man who lived in Fallon NV years before I ever did, once told me that when you are looking for the gate where the flight to Reno is boarding, you'll know you found it when you see a massive group of people wearing supplemental oxygen masks and generally coughing up a lung. He was right.
 
Roger Roger said:
The miraculous healing air of PBI
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Which gate is the one going to Florida (MCO, SRQ, TPA or PBI):

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Guy I flew with held the company record for a long time for the number of wheelchairs requested for one flight.

74, going to RSW. I waved the BS flag, but he showed me the paperwork, which he kept as a weird keepsake.

And this was the old terminal at RSW, that had maybe 3 wheelchairs in the whole place.
 
I remember doing ISP-PBI in the fall during migration season. Wheelchairs backed up from the gate halfway down the concourse to the CSA stand. Every other one of them had a little yappy dog in their lap.

They dual deplaned us in PBI and everyone with functional legs went out the back door before the unhealed could be wheeled out.
 
Murdoughnut said:
My experience flying AC this summer led me to the belief that Canada (the entire country) is probably up for the taking if we want it bad enough.
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Friends in the Great White tell me that they've had a really hard time coming back from COVID. Not from the actual disease, mind you, but recovering from the shutdown. Everyone basically quit. Like the whole country.

They had doctors they liked, but they all simply shuttered their practices. Didn't leave any recommendations, didn't provide for any follow on referral, just quit and walked away. They were left scrambling to find new care. They report similar issues finding other professionals.

Personally, I think what the apocalypse showed people is that there IS life outside of work. The US has been on a productivity bender since the 1980’s, and of course, corporations took full advantage, not only to drag out any pay increases, but to shutter important benefits like pensions and medical care. Other “industries” took advantage of that, which is where we get parasitic “heath care” companies that provide no actual services, and “financial management” which seems to serve only to cause churn, from which they make money.

So people had a taste of actual time off, and they don’t want to let it go. But as always, people take advantage of a good deal, and you wind up with the pendulum swinging too far.
 
MikeD said:
That’s odd. Aren’t the wheelchair personnel airport contractors that the gate agents request prior to an airplane’s arrival?

As in, did the gate agent tell the FA there were no wheelchairs available?
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They can be very limited, and the system is strained by travelers who put in WCHR requests for tight connections knowing that the flight will probably wait for them. Seriously, not just sometimes, but often. Almost always white businessmen who do it. The gate agents can remove the WCHR if they take the time to look up the guy and go back once he walks on the plane, but they're busy so more often than not the chairs are called on arrival for people who don't need one.

There were often times in SMF with DL where there were 2-3 wheelchair agents and you'd have 3 or 4 arrivals within 20-30 mins and a total of 30+ chairs. People would sometimes wait over an hour just to be taken to the baggage claim, especially since totally immobile people need that service all the way to their transportation out of the airport. The staffing (when fully staffed) is based on averages. But you never know when a CRJ-700 with 66 seats is going to show up with 40+ requests because of the Special Olympics or something and the huge wait times are almost always going to trigger complaints and possibly news stories. It is more complicated than people realize to assist handicapped customers. I have seen waits of over 2 hours for wheelchair pax at multiple airlines due to unusual circumstances. A certain (huge) airline I once worked for actually prioritizes ramp agents loading bags over doing aisle chairs, and doing the aisle chairs is a ramp function at that airline. So, the policy is literally for the immobile person to wait so that baggage time metrics don't take a hit.
 
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All good responses here; I figured there was some level of backstory on how this all works, and the associated pitfalls, that could likely have been factors.

In this oaericular situation, since the airplane apparently had to be turned, and the handicapped person wouldn’t be allowed to just wait onboard for a wheelchair, would this person presumably have been made a priority over others to get a wheelchair to his gate, assuming there were ones available going to other gates? Or does that depend on how the wheelchair arrangement works at the international terminal at LAS?
 
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