Did you see this...in Canada...

Disabled, obese allowed free extra plane seat

Top court refuses airlines' appeal of 'one-person, one-fare' ruling

Janice Tibbetts, Canwest News Service

Canada's two largest airlines must give disabled and morbidly obese passengers an extra free seat on domestic flights, beginning in January, after the Supreme Court refused yesterday to consider the carriers' appeal of a federal order.

The Supreme Court, by convention, gave no reason for declining to intervene in the case.

Tim Boyle/Getty Images

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The decision ended a six-year battle by disabled travellers to secure two seats for the price of one if they need inflight attendants. Obese people can also qualify if they are too large to fit in a single seat.

Air Canada and WestJet failed in their pitch for the court to consider a January 2008 decision from the Canadian Transportation Agency that gave them one year to implement new policies in the absence of being able to show that a "one-person, one-fare" structure would cause undue hardship.

"This means I'm equal now," said Joanne Neubauer, a Victoria woman whose severe rheumatoid arthritis requires her to use a wheelchair. "I'm just so excited and happy that justice prevailed."

The agency said the airlines must develop a process to assess eligibility. The free seats need not be provided to obese people who are just uncomfortable in their seats or are not disabled by their size, said the ruling.

The airlines also do not have to make allowances for disabled people who prefer to travel with a companion for personal reasons or those *****quire care on the ground, but not in the air.

"The agency is leaving it up to Air Canada and WestJet to develop their own screening policies," said agency spokes-man Marc Comeau.

A possible sticking point is how to decide when obesity is a disability. The agency has recommended the airlines adopt a policy used by Dallas-based Southwest Airlines, which gives a free seat to people who are too big to lower their armrest.

The ruling is expected to benefit would-be travellers like Linda McKay-Panos, a Calgarian who has secured a declaration from the Federal Court of Appeal that she is obese enough to be considered disabled.

Ms. McKay-Panos, executive director of the Alberta Civil Liberties Research Centre, said yesterday that she has not travelled on Air Canada since 1997, when she endured a "humiliating" flight in which the airline refused her an extra seat even though "my hips were flowing over the arm rest, my hips were basically on the lap of the person who sat beside me."

Now 51, she said she was born with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, a hormonal disorder that causes obesity in about 50 per cent of those afflicted.