Michael Korchak: Man misses flight over medical marijuana mishap

Michael Korchak was admittedly a little nervous flying home to Toronto from Halifax for the holidays last week.

He’d hit a snag on his trip home to Burlington last Thursday for Christmas and a group of Air Canada employees was gathering around him at its busy departure gate at the Halifax airport.

The 25-year-old Canadian Armed Forces member, who’s in the process of receiving a medical discharge because of a traumatic injury suffered on duty, has a prescription for medicinal marijuana to help with chronic pain.

But despite having a legal prescription and all the necessary paperwork, he was repeatedly told he couldn’t board the plane unless he threw out the medicine — worth about $100.

Korchak says when he tried to prove his case with his documents, he was told he was being “difficult” and Air Canada workers threatened to call security.

In an email statement, Air Canada spokesperson Peter Fitzpatrick said the airline has since changed its policy to allow legally prescribed mediacl marijuana in both leaf and pill form.

“Although he had official medical authorization forms he was not accepted for travel because his medical marijuana was in leaf form and our travel policies at the time only permitted medical marijuana in pill form,” he wrote. “Our procedures for travelling with medical marijuana have since been amended to include leaf form.”

“We apologized, immediately offered a refund, and assisted him in booking a flight on another airline. We also explained that he could submit any further expense incurred to our customer service team.”

Agencies/Canadajournal