Air Canada has apologized for the conduct of its employees after a video surfaced of baggage handlers dropping luggage from the top of a staircase into luggage bins at the bottom.
Dwayne Stewart, of Vancouver, shot the video while he was waiting for his flight to take off from Toronto’s Pearson International Airport, according to CBC. From the window of his seat he recorded a baggage handler dropping bags from the top of a staircase, presumably to save time walking each individual bag down the steps. Stewart later posted the footage to YouTube, where it has since been seen more than 1 million times.
In response to the video, posted April 17, Air Canada tweeted the following apology:
“We apologize for the totally unacceptable mishandling of our passengers' baggage captured on video. The employees involved have been advised that their employment will be terminated pending the outcome of our investigation,” Angela Mah, a spokeswoman for Air Canada told The Huffington Post on Monday. “We take matters involving the protection of our customers’ personal possessions very seriously. The actions of these individuals are not representative of the vast majority of our employees who work hard every day to take care of our customers.”
Stewart told CBC the flight he was on while filming was crowded and that many people had checked their carry-on luggage since the storage bins in the cabin were full.
“The gate check, unfortunately, turned into a gate toss,” he said. Later he added that he understood the logic of tossing the bags rather than carrying them, arguing that walking dozens of bags down steep steps could be dangerous. However, he admits that this “doesn’t help passengers whose baggage they don’t want to have treated in that fashion.”