Transport Committee on Feb. 15th, 2024

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much for your opening remarks.

We'll begin our line of questioning today with Mr. Strahl.

Mr. Strahl, the floor is yours. You have six minutes, sir.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Hope, BC]

Thank you very much. Thank you to the WestJet team for being here today.

I appreciate your remarks. I read different press releases through the National Airlines Council and from your own website. Everyone is always very sorry and very committed to doing better whenever these things happen, but these high-profile incidents continue to plague Canadian airlines, including yours, with stories of a Paralympian being forced to make her way up the stairs, using her own strength. I know there was some service offered, but it wasn't acceptable to her.

We keep hearing stories about mobility aids, wheelchairs being left behind, when these are critical. They're specialized pieces of equipment. They can't simply be replaced by a rental at the other end.

We need to see where the rubber is going to hit the road here. Thoughts and prayers are no longer acceptable.

I'll stick with the mobility aids to get down to the brass tacks. What are you doing to ensure that it is impossible for someone with a mobility aid to arrive at their destination without it, and without its being damaged? What specific steps is WestJet taking to ensure that that kind of situation is simply impossible when it comes to someone taking a WestJet flight?

[Alexis von Hoensbroech]

First, let me say that whenever these cases you referred to happen, it is as bad for us as it is for those people who are exposed to this. So we sincerely apologize to them, but we equally always look at our internal process to try to understand what went wrong, because we are an organization that wants to deliver a good service. This works in the vast majority of the cases, but every case that goes wrong is one too many. We know that, and we always use this as an opportunity to improve.

Out of 1,000 mobility aids that we transport, 999 will make it safely and undamaged to their destination. That's good. By the way, that's better than we perform on normal bags, which already shows that we put much more attention on this. However, the one is also one too many, so we are going to be working through what we can do to improve this.

There are a couple of things we can do. We are about to introduce a process whereby we get positive confirmation that we can deliver to the guest that the mobility aid is on board. That's a process we're going to introduce very soon.

We also will make sure that every single mobility aid is properly wrapped. We do this on part of our network, but we will roll this out to the entire network. We have seen cases where a wheel was bent after transportation, and this creates a problem, so that's certainly another problem.

We also know that we need to be clearer within our own regulations but also towards our guests around the size and weight of the mobility aid, because some of them are pretty big and create quite a challenge to take on board.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Hope, BC]

I appreciate that.

I want to ask one more question.

When someone books a ticket on WestJet and they've identified that they have an accessibility or disability need, at what point does WestJet take ownership of that passenger for the care of the passenger?

Vance asked about end-to-end care, because we've heard of stories where there's a re-booking. People are now waiting for a flight for four hours and they're just sitting in the gate area. What relationship do you have with the airports to ensure that there's not a missed hand-off, where people are not provided care and customer service from the time they enter the airport until the time they exit your aircraft at the other end? How do you work with the airports to ensure that's happening?

[Alexis von Hoensbroech]

First of all, we know that we own the guest relationship, so we are at the end always accountable for making sure that they make it through the airport, into their seat and on the way out again. I can only re-emphasize what has been said before by Nada and others, that it is an end-to-end experience and that we need to get it right. This involves various stakeholders. I'm not saying this because I would be finger pointing, but we have to work together to get a seamless experience.

I think there's room for improvement in Canada. I've worked in Europe before—if you'll allow me to add this experience—and, in Europe, there was a regulation introduced about 15 years ago that targeted this end-to-end piece by saying that all services related to passengers with reduced mobility must be provided by the airport and only by the airport end to end. This took a lot of complexity out of the system—there were no more handover points, no different parties handling wheelchairs and doing all the logistics around it—and this has dramatically improved the end-to-end airport experience at European airports.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you, Mr. Strahl.

Thank you, Mr. von Hoensbroech.

Next we will go to Ms. Koutrakis.

Ms. Koutrakis, the floor is yours. You have six minutes, please.

[Annie Koutrakis, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our guests from WestJet for appearing before the transport committee once again to discuss this very important issue.

Unfortunately, we have all seen news items that quite a few of our fellow Canadians with disabilities do not feel they have the same travelling experience as many of us without a disability currently enjoy.

With that said, according to the statistics you shared, 700 passengers with disabilities are being serviced by WestJet every day, and I believe you when you say that you want to do better. Having said that, everything to do better stems from money. I'm just wondering if you could share with us today how much WestJet made in the last quarter and how much of that is going to be invested to make sure that passengers with disabilities are going to have a better experience?

[Alexis von Hoensbroech]

Thank you.

WestJet has always invested in delivering a superior guest experience, and I think we also have a reputation and a track record of doing so. We measure our guest experience very, very thoroughly and with data. Maybe an interesting fact to share with you is that we measure the passenger experience of both our guests without disabilities and those with disabilities. Interestingly and consistently over many, many years, we have seen that passengers with disabilities rate our service significantly better than average passengers rate our service. This is rightfully so and has to be so because every passenger with a disability deserves special attention, and they get special attention. This is a very, very consistent theme. Therefore, on the large scale of things, I don't think that we have a cultural problem or an attention problem.

Having said that, we are an organization made up of humans, and sometimes errors happen. We know that. That's in every organization. We take every error, every mistake and every terrible story that happens as an opportunity to improve our service.

[Annie Koutrakis, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

The first part of my question was about whether you could share with us, please, how much the revenues were. I'm sure if it's online we can find it there, but I think, for the record, it would be interesting to hear the amount that WestJet made in the last quarter.

[Alexis von Hoensbroech]

We are a private company. We don't disclose financials, but we have said that we have been profitable every single quarter last year. That's good because that gives us the means to make necessary investments in services. At the end of the day, we need to be an organization that delivers good service to our guests and good service to all of our guests, and that is what we will always invest money in.

[Annie Koutrakis, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

Mr. von Hoensbroech, are you committed to looking into acquiring technology and aircraft that would be more accessibility-friendly and that can accommodate wheelchairs, for instance? We've heard and seen stories that many of the passengers who are currently travelling with wheelchairs have a very difficult time. Are you willing to say to us here today that you're willing to take some of those profits to make sure that you purchase technology and aircraft that would be more accessible to passengers travelling with wheelchairs?

[Alexis von Hoensbroech]

I will always ensure that we have solutions that work for our guests. Again, it will depend on what kinds of mobility aids they have. There are some very complex, heavy and sizable mobility aids in some cases, and we have a fleet of very different types of airplanes. We have big airplanes like the intercontinental 787s, which have quite a lot of room on the passenger level for mobility aids. Then we also have relatively small regional turboprop airplanes, which have no space at all in the passenger cabin, but they have space in the hold to transport those. Whatever it takes to make it possible we will always do.

Part of it is or can be technology-related, but a lot of it is also process-related. The example I gave before about how we will not take off unless the passenger gets a positive confirmation that their wheelchair has been loaded is probably the most meaningful thing that we can do to ensure that the wheelchair arrives with the guest at the destination.

[Annie Koutrakis, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

I wanted to switch to training.

You said in your testimony that all employees receive training. Is this training mandatory for all employees? How many of your employees have completed the training? More importantly, have the executive team and maybe board members of WestJet also received this training? Have you ever received this training?

[Alexis von Hoensbroech]

The way we do it is that every employee who is guest-facing and who potentially interacts with people with disabilities has to be trained, and every employee or supplier that is handling equipment has to be trained. It's mandatory, and it's repetitive, so it's constantly being updated. What we don't have is.... Not every leader and every executive no matter what their role is has to do every training at the company. For example, I don't take flight training because I'm not a pilot. However, I make sure that every pilot is properly trained. My job is to make sure that everyone who interacts with people with disabilities or with their equipment is properly trained, and that's the case. Of course, we have awareness training, which we all go through.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you, Ms. Koutrakis.

Next we have Mr. Barsalou-Duval.

The floor is yours for six minutes, please.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank the Westjet witnesses for joining us,

I'll pick up from where my colleague left off regarding the staff training issue. She put a question about this issue to the witness who appeared before you.

I referred to a number of cases in the media where people with reduced mobility encountered issues and filed complaints. It quickly became apparent that most cases that received media coverage involved staff who lacked training and who didn't know how to look after people with reduced mobility.

The case of Lisa Gilliard and Phil Gilliard, which recently received media coverage and concerned WestJet, shows the same situation again. The staff weren't properly trained. They didn't know how to look after the passenger, or at least they didn't look after him properly.

You said that all staff who interact with people with disabilities must receive training. Why do these situations occur if the staff have been properly trained?

[Alexis von Hoensbroech]

We have training and we constantly improve the training curriculum to make sure that the training always improves and that we capture those cases where we saw things going wrong.

Generally, I'm actually pretty confident that the training level of our staff is good. However, I also recognize that in some cases we are maybe not as clear as we should be about how to handle some special devices.

We have cases where there are big mobility aids that do not fit in the cargo hold. People would try to make it work with the best intentions. They would tilt it over to the side and the tilting over to the side would then cause either damage or some unintended function of the device. With this, it's doing something with good intentions to actually get it on board and let it fly with the guest, but the good intentions could actually damage the device.

These are things we saw happening and we drew our conclusions. Going forward, we'll be much clearer on what kind of devices and what sizes and weights can actually fly on a particular aircraft type and which ones cannot. This is one of the improvements that we need to make.

I'm confident that, overall, the training program is effective. We absolutely ensure that everyone performs the training.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

You think that the training and instruction are sufficient, but these situations still happen. I'm not entirely satisfied with your answer, because we wouldn't see this type of situation arise again and again. This doesn't just concern WestJet, but also Air Transat and Air Canada. It seems to happen regularly.

It also seems that another situation keeps cropping up. It concerns how airlines handle complaints. We were told earlier that cases in the media seem to be treated differently. People complain, but don't seem to get a response until their case receives media coverage. In the case that I referred to earlier, we were told that, after making a complaint, the people didn't receive a response from WestJet. It wasn't until their case went public that they received answers and a call from the company offering an apology.

Are cases that receive media coverage handled differently from cases that don't?

[Alexis von Hoensbroech]

First of all, this is why I'm here. I also need to interact and hear from you what you're hearing.

However, some cases make it to the media and some cases don't make it to the media. Every case is brought to our attention. Every single case is a case that we investigate in order to improve our service. It is our ambition to provide good service.

These guests are as valuable to us as any other guest. We want to be an accessible airline. That has been our ambition from the first day.

That doesn't mean that we are perfect. No organization is ever perfect. There's no organization where no mistakes or errors ever happen. We have a good track record, even as an industry, for learning from our mistakes. If we just look at flight safety, for instance—

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Sorry to interrupt you, but I have one last question.

The Canadian Transportation Agency says that it has received just under 1,000 complaints regarding accessibility over the past five years. You said that you routinely look after people with reduced mobility as part of your regular activities. How many of these 1,000 complaints concern WestJet?

[Alexis von Hoensbroech]

Last year, we had 260,000 wheelchair-using guests, and we had about 200 complaints.

Am I correct?

[Todd Peterson, Director, Regulatory Affairs, WestJet Airlines Ltd.]

There were approximately 200 complaints that we received and investigated. Some of those also involved damage to or various events with mobility devices. We fixed or repaired about 390 mobility devices.

Those are quite small numbers relative to the very large number of passengers we carry with accessibility....

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you, Mr. Barsalou‑Duval.

Mr. Bachrach, you now have the floor for six minutes.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the team from WestJet for joining our committee meeting.

I'm looking through some of these high-profile stories from last year alone involving the mistreatment of passengers with disabilities.

There's the situation involving Melanie Carlbeck's wheelchair, which was left behind on her flight. She was given a wheelchair that wasn't suitable and her own chair didn't arrive until days later.

Also in 2023, Phil Gilliard was dropped by WestJet staff who did not know how to use an eagle lift. This resulted in a bloody wound and bad bruises on his arm.

Four-year-old Blake Turnbull went without a wheelchair for over a month after WestJet damaged the rim of her wheelchair, making the brakes unusable. The staff allowed Blake to pull herself off the plane by wriggling along the floor, and proceeded to call her a salamander.

Finally, and we heard this cited earlier in questioning, former Paralympian Sarah Morris-Probert had to lift herself up the stairs of the aircraft because the only other option WestJet gave her to board her plane was to be carried up the stairs in a wheelchair, which I don't believe is a safe practice.

Perhaps your answer to the last question provided some indication of this. These are the cases that received media attention. What percentage of the overall number of cases of passenger mistreatment do the cases I just read represent?

[Alexis von Hoensbroech]

Thank you for that question.

Every single case that you described is a terrible case. It is always the case that we thoroughly investigate and try to understand what led up to the events that were eventually reported in the media. It's always a learning opportunity for us.

As I also said, it's about 200 complaints over 250,000 guests with disabilities that we fly, so the percentage is very low. It's 99.9% of the guests who actually have a good experience. Having said that, every single case is a case too many. Definitely for us, it's a mandatory thing to work on.

However, we all know that media is sometimes showing one angle of the story. For us, it's always important to understand what was actually happening. We have a medical team that has the dedicated job of talking to those individuals to understand what was going on and to see how we can support and help them, but especially to understand what went wrong in a particular case.

Let me just pick the example of Paralympian who crawled up the stairs in Los Cabos, Mexico. In this case, we have a contract with the airport that we always get the aircraft to a finger position so that they can actually horizontally enter the airplane. That's the standard.

On this particular day, from airport congestion, our airplane was forced to park on the tarmac, which is unusual and not how it should be. It shows that this is an ecosystem that has to work together. The seamless experience requires everyone to perform, not just the airline.

We were on the tarmac and we informed the lady that we had a challenge now to get her on board. There is, of course, always a plan B for how to get someone on board in such a situation where just stairs are available. There's a trained, approved and safe process to do this, which is carrying the guest up the stairs because that is the only option left. There's an approved process for how to do it.

Now, I understand that this is not a great process and I don't like it either, but it was the next best option or the last good option that we had. Then this particular lady decided that she didn't want it. She preferred to push herself up the stairs. Of course, this is a humiliating experience. I can't imagine how bad this was for her, but it was also her particular choice to do this.

I'm asking many questions around this as well now. Why does Los Cabos not have a proper device to lift someone up? How is the rest of our system composed in airports?

We fly to lots of airports. Many of them are not in Canada, but in Mexico, the Caribbean and all over the place. The airport infrastructure is often quite diverse.

These are the questions that we asked, but we certainly never offered an unsafe procedure to that lady.