Intellectually disabled man in Canada manages to fly on Air Canada without ID

From The Canadian Press:

BLACKFALDS, Alta — When Doug Tiedeman met an Ontario woman on Facebook who shared his rabid interest in "Star Trek," the logical next step was to try to meet her in person.

The 21-year-old, who has cerebral palsy and functions at the mental age of a 12-year-old, called a cab and directed the driver 100 kilometres south to the airport in Calgary.

Tiedeman's parents say he managed to buy a seat and then board an Air Canada flight headed east -- even though he only has his Costco and Visa cards as identification.

His family and police spent 24 nervous hours trying to track him down before finally finding him at the airport in London, Ont., where he was waiting, alone and scared, thousands of kilometres from home.

Now his family wants answers from Air Canada. How did Tiedeman fly halfway across the country with only a wholesale store membership and his credit card to prove who he was?

"I hope that other families do not have to go through this," Tiedeman's stepmother, Simone, said in an interview from her home in Blackfalds, Alta. "That would be my main goal."

Transport Canada requires airlines to get some kind of government-issued identification from every passenger boarding a plane. Either one piece of photo identification or two pieces without a photo are acceptable. Names are cross-referenced with a no-fly list to weed out potential terrorist threats.

Air Canada said it is investigating what happened. The airline noted that ID is not required to buy a domestic ticket, just to board.

Transport Canada said it will investigate, too.

"Airlines can be fined up to $25 000 per occurrence of non-compliance, and our government will not hesitate to take appropriate actions if necessary," a department spokeswoman said in an email.

The Tiedemans' frustration with the airline isn't just about the identification.

Simone Tiedeman said the family knew Doug had probably taken an Air Canada flight because they checked the last number he dialled on the phone and got the reservation centre. But because he is 21, she said, the airline refused to release any information about where he was going. It wasn't until the RCMP got involved that the airline gave the details.

She said the airline also gave the family grief when they tried to get Doug home because, ironically, he didn't have the proper ID to fly. And now the airline won't discuss the case with them, she said, because a waiver Doug signed giving the airline permission to talk about his case wasn't accepted -- again because he didn't have the proper ID.

The airline said its hands were tied by privacy laws.

"In the absence of proof of legal guardianship, we were unable to provide the Tiedemans with their son's personal travel information," it said in the statement. "We trust the Tiedemans recognize our responsibility to comply with law governing individuals' rights to privacy, and we are in contact directly with the Tiedemans to try to resolve this matter."

Doug's parents never applied for legal guardianship over Doug because they never thought he would do something like this, Simone Tiedeman said. Now family members are watching his activities on the Internet a lot more closely and are limiting his access to his credit card.

"We're hurt," she said. "We're frustrated that something like this could happen and we just hope that it doesn't happen to any other family -- that they have to go through what we went through."