What could have possibly been Sheila Rizzuto’s last vacation ever was ruined after she fell out of an Air Canada-provided wheelchair and badly injured herself, according to her husband.
Vito Rizzuto told CTV News that Miami has always held a special place in the hearts of the Toronto couple and their kids. So months after Sheila was diagnosed with glioblastoma — an aggressive form of brain cancer — they booked what they thought might be one of their final visits together to their beloved city.
The Nov. 5 flight from Pearson International Airport marked the first time the couple had been on a plane since February, when two surgeries left Sheila partially paralyzed on her right side. She now uses a wheelchair and has vision and speech impairments.
When they were disembarking in Miami, Vito said, Air Canada agents attempted to place Sheila in an aisle chair — a narrower version of the wheelchair she was travelling with — to get her off the plane. But when the agents couldn’t successfully buckle Sheila into the mobility device, Vito said, they transported her to the bridge unrestrained.
When the couple got off the plane, the two agents who had been assisting Sheila “just left her sitting there,” Vito recalled, as they waited nearly 10 minutes for her wheelchair.
“I spoke to the lady from Air Canada that was standing there, and I said, ‘Where is our wheelchair?’ And they weren’t aware that we had a wheelchair. I was like, ‘Okay, how can you not be aware?’”
That’s when she fell.
“I was distracted, and all of a sudden she fell. She was on the floor, fell onto her right side, which is her weak side, which is the no mobility side,” Vito said. “It was a horrible experience for her. She was in shock when it happened, hyperventilating, you know?”
Sheila was left bleeding from a cut on her leg and large black and blue bruises would later develop on her ribs, as well as on her arm and leg, Vito said.
Sheila Rizzuto sustained injuries to her ribs, arm, leg, and ankle as a result of the fall. (Supplied)
The couple initially declined Air Canada’s offer to have emergency services attend the scene, but eventually checked into hospital on Nov. 8 as a precaution.
Vito suspected that Sheila’s ribs were broken, and although an X-ray didn’t find any fractures, he said the emergency room doctor they spoke with said broken ribs can be difficult to identify in a scan.
“Basically, all our plans got kiboshed. We didn’t go for any dinners. We ended up ordering into the room and so on,” Vito explained.
Sheila remained in pain for most of the trip, but Vito said the couple was able to make the most of their last two days in Florida before they flew back.
Vito says he’s sharing his story now to prevent this from happening to anyone else who lives with a disability.
“I haven’t experienced having to take care of somebody in my wife’s position except for the last nine months now. And obviously I’m more aware of the challenges that they face and that we face, because she can’t get around on her own, you know. So it’s a matter of awareness and taking care of people that are in this position and hopefully stop this from happening again,” he said.
Since the incident, Vito said he has been in touch with Air Canada, which apologized and offered him a $500 travel voucher.
Air Canada calls incident ‘concerning’
In a statement to CTV News Toronto, Air Canada said it was aware of the incident and confirmed that Sheila did sustain an injury from a fall “while being transferred to her wheelchair.”
“This matter is concerning and is now being reviewed by our claims department,” a spokesperson said in a statement.
However, they alleged that Vito did “not want our agent to touch his wife in the manner required to secure the belt” based on a “preliminary review” of the incident.
“The use of this belt would have likely prevented the injury,” the airline wrote.
Vito rebuffed that suggestion and said he was “furious” about their claim while speaking with CTV News Toronto. He added that his wife struggled to get to her seat with her walker when they boarded in Toronto, not knowing that an aisle chair was available.
“Someone is trying to cover things up about the sequence of events in both Toronto and Miami,” he wrote in a subsequent email.
Air Canada added that they will continue to be in contact with Vito and his wife to come to a “mutually agreeable” solution.
Vito and Sheila Rizzuto are seen with their two sons in this undated image. (Supplied)
Little being done to address accessibility issues on Canadian flights: advocate
Last year, the CEO of Air Canada was summoned to Ottawa following a number of high-profile incidents involving passengers with accessibility needs, including a B.C. man who was forced to drag himself off a flight in Las Vegas.
Air Canada CEO Michael Rousseau apologized at that time for its barriers to accessibility and promised to speed up its three-year plan to make air travel more accessible.
In May, at the first-ever Canadian Air Accessibility Summit, airline executives, federal ministers and accessibility advocates gathered in Ottawa to discuss the issue. Minister of Diversity, Inclusion and Persons with Disabilities of Canada Kamal Khera acknowledged that while only some stories have made headlines, “they represent a small number of the instances that do occur.”
“We can, and we must, do better,” she said at the time.
But according to David Lepofsky, chair of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance, little progress has been made on making Canadian air travel more accessible since then.
“Let’s put it this way, they’ve not told us of anything. So if something has happened, it’s not been communicated to us,” he said in an interview with CTV News Toronto.
The visiting professor of disability rights at Western Law and at the University of Ottawa said the federal government and Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA), an independent regulator, are effectively “sitting on their hands” in the absence of strong enforcement against airlines in this country.
Lepofsky, who is legally blind, suggests that Canada should, among other things, act on two recommendations immediately to address the issue: the first being introducing an air passengers with disabilities bill of rights that is enshrined into law and “vigorously enforced” and the second being on-site, rapid response supports at airports when accessibility challenges arise.
Ottawa previously passed the Accessible Canada Act in 2019 with the goal of making travel more accessible. Then, in 2022, the Accessible Transportation for Persons with Disabilities Regulations, was introduced. But accessibility advocates say that despite those changes airlines rarely face punishment for breaching Canadian disability regulations.
“These incidents keep recurring and airlines and the government keep saying that, you, know it’s important to do better. But if you keep trusting them to do better, under the present circumstances, nothing’s going to get better,” he said.
CTA investigating incident
In an email to CTV News Toronto, the CTA confirmed it was investigating Sheila’s fall, adding that it’s closed 176 accessibility related complaints through its mediation or adjudication processes since May 2024.
“Even if a complaint is not filed with it, if the CTA is made aware of an incident (e.g., through media reports), its enforcement team reviews the incident and may conduct a full investigation, leading to Notices of Violation (NOVs) and administrative monetary penalties (AMPs),” a spokesperson said.
The CTA added that in December 2023, it launched a pilot project in which enforcement officers shadowed passengers with accessibility needs on domestic and international flights to better understand the challenges they face during air travel.
“The CTA is currently in the process of applying lessons learned from this pilot project to develop an ongoing program to ensure that it has a broader understanding of the lived experience of persons with disabilities who access the national transportation system, and are able to effectively apply that knowledge when conducting future inspections and investigations,” the CTA said.
With files from Annie Bergeron-Oliver and The Canadian Press