Saturday, August 7, 2010

Hundreds on Twitter criticize airline for breaking Tanner Bawn's wheelchair

A young boy who needs a special mobility chair is again able to move and participate in life thanks to the online community applying massive pressure to Air Canada, the airline who broke his chair.

While not specifically about a nontheist topic, this story caught my attention.It shows what a clearly communicated message and desired outcomes can accomplish. It also highlights once again how Air Canada is a terrible company whose business model seems to include bullying those it serves poorly in an attempt to get them to settle for inferior resolution of the problem. I've peronally seen them discriminate in providing accomodations and amenities topeople their poor service has left stranded, based primarily on how vulnerable those people seem to be at the moment and how little it appears they will settle for.

While a number of us protested this, it took the intervention of a Super Elite customer threatening to stop flying with them to motivate them to treat these people better and offer them suitable accommodations and amenities. When the airline staff tried to placate him afterwards by offering him even more perks, he told them to give them to the folks they had mistreated.

What is great about this is the fact that people didn't need to rally around a religion to do the right thing, nor they need to find any motive beyond helping another human in need-a lesson in how we as nontheists might be able to achieve justice for others, demonstrating our convinctions in action.

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