Georgina Villeneuve says the humiliation still stings when she thinks about being forced off a Porter plane last month.
She was threatened by a flight attendant and berated by another passenger — all over her 20 pound service dog sleeping at her feet.
“For a week I cried nonstop … [I] don’t like to create scenes,” the Edmonton woman told Go Public.
Villeneuve lost most of her hearing a few years ago after a viral infection. She says she can’t hear out of her right ear and has less than 15 per cent hearing in her left, so she mainly communicates by reading lips.
She relies on her service dog, Maggie, to alert her to dangers or sounds she needs to be aware of. Maggie also helps with Villeneuve’s lack of balance caused by her hearing loss.
But as a Porter plane bound for Edmonton waited in line to taxi down a Toronto runway in September, a flight attendant ordered Villeneuve to put her service dog under the seat in front of her — a direct violation of both Porter and Canadian Transportation Agency rules because it can injure the animal and interfere with the dog’s ability to help its disabled owner.
An Alberta woman who is deaf says she was berated, threatened and removed from a Porter Airlines flight last month, over a misunderstanding about her service dog. The airline was fined for the incident, but advocates say more action is needed.
“She said to me … ‘It’s like this. That dog goes under the seat or we’re turning the plane around … and we’re going to remove you from the flight.'”
All the while, Villeneuve says an irate passenger seated in the row ahead was on a tirade, angry about a possible flight interruption.
“He keeps yelling and screaming and telling us we’re inconsiderate and we’re losers,” Villeneuve said. “He says, ‘Just take the damn dog and kick it under the seat.’ “
Villeneuve had done everything she was supposed to do in order to bring a service animal on a flight. She even tried showing the flight attendant Porter’s own rules posted on the airline’s website — but the crew member wouldn’t drop her demand.
An advocate for people with disabilities says he’s not surprised to hear what happened to Villeneuve, but is “deeply disappointed.”
That’s because mandatory rules around service animals on flights have been in place for years, so there’s no excuse for airline staff to step on the rights of disabled passengers, according to Robin East, co-chair of the Transportation Committee for the Council of Canadians with Disabilities.
“The dog is not a piece of luggage. It’s not that extra piece that you get to take on the plane,” he said.
“That dog is there to do a job, and that job is to alert that person if something is happening around them that could be dangerous or that she needs to be alerted to.”
Porter Airlines says it has a “strong initial and recurrent training in place.”
After hearing from Go Public, an airline spokesperson said in an email that it plans to expand the training related to service animals on flights and improve how crew members interact with passengers with disabilities.
Passenger invited back onto same flight
The plane had already left the gate when the pilot made the decision to remove Villeneuve from the flight.
“We were in the lineup to take off, he had to pull out of the taxi, he had to turn around. We had to go to the gate and we had to wait for people to show up,” Villeneuve said.
Flanked by the crew, she was escorted off the plane. “It’s so embarrassing. People in the back don’t know what’s going on. Did they think, ‘Is she drunk or did she light up a cigarette? What did she do?’ “
Under Transport Canada’s rules on service dogs, airlines are obligated to provide floor space to allow for both the service dog to lie down on the floor by the seat of the passenger and for the passenger’s legs and feet, while ensuring that they can both travel safely and comfortably.
If the dog is larger, airlines are required to provide a seat next to the person with the disability.
Back at the gate, Villeneuve says things got even more strange.
She says a manager told the crew it had just broken the airline’s own rules, then told her she could get back on the same flight — or take a later one.
Fearing the aggressive passenger and having lost trust in the airline, she refused both offers.
“I just said, ‘No, I’ll find my own way home.’ ” She booked a flight with another airline, which cost her $2,960.
Porter apologized, but initially wouldn’t refund the flight or reimburse Villeneuve for other expenses or her 10-hour delay; only offering a travel voucher.
She says she refused that, too, partly because she’d had another problem with Porter in June, when a flight attendant suggested her dog might not be a real service animal despite the fact that she provided proof on the spot.
Porter admitted its mistake at the time and offered Villeneuve compensation, only for her to face a similar issue a few months later.
East, the disabilities advocate, is blind and has had his own battles with airlines. In 2009, he successfully appealed to the federal court to broaden the “One Person, One Fare” law for domestic travel. Before his win, airlines were only obligated to provide human attendants with space at no additional charge. Service animals are now part of that rule.
He says the repercussions for airlines that don’t follow regulations related to disabled passengers aren’t tough enough.
“We need to make sure … carriers are put into a situation such that they don’t really want to make that error or that mistake again.”
In the last five years, the Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA) says it has issued a total of $874,500 dollars in fines to Canadian airlines for violating Accessible Transportation for Persons with Disabilities Regulations.
During the same five years, major Canadian airlines reported a combined operating revenue of $93 billion.
Porter blames ‘miscommunication’
The airline says the flight attendant didn’t initially tell the pilot that “the animal in question was a service animal. Therefore, the full context of the situation was not known when the captain decided to return to the gate,” Porter wrote in an email to CBC News.
Porter blames crew miscommunication, saying it takes full responsibility for what happened.
“This was an unfortunate case of human error that was exacerbated by a miscommunication between crewmembers, which led to the aircraft returning to the gate.”
“I don’t understand how they could get you that response,” said Villeneuve. “I think that the flight attendant and the pilot were negligent and disrespectful of not just myself, but everyone on the plane.”
After hearing from Go Public, the airline’s president spoke to Villeneuve “to better understand her perspective, to take ownership of her experience and to personally apologize.”
The airline offered to refund the cost of the Porter flight, the ticket Villeneuve booked on another airline to get home, as well as her additional expenses and $1,000 in compensation.
Villeneuve says the airline also promised to make a donation to an organization she picked.
“I’m still frustrated, which I think is understandable,” she said.
“But, I think taking this stance that Porter had to do a meaningful donation to the Canadian Hearing Society is sending a message to the company that they have to start maybe educating their staff and in how to handle passengers with disabilities.”
On Friday, Nov. 1, our colleagues at Marketplace put Air Canada’s promises to improve air travel for people with disabilities to the test. That’s at 8 p.m. ET.
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