If you have ever waited at a gate for an airport wheelchair attendant who never came, the next part is for you. Autonomous wheelchairs that drive themselves to your gate are no longer a pilot project in one airport. As of 3 June 2026, WHILL says its Autonomous Service is operating at 26 airports and facilities globally, with more than one million autonomous rides delivered worldwide. Those are the manufacturer’s own figures.
This is not a concept video. It is operating now.
How it actually works
The main player is WHILL, whose autonomous chairs are in service at a growing list of airports. You sit down, use the touchscreen to pick your language, and tap your departure gate. The chair drives itself there. Onboard sensors watch for other travellers and obstacles and steer around them. When you arrive, the chair returns to the queue on its own for the next person.
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Get the newsletterNo waiting for a pusher. No making conversation with a stranger steering you through a terminal. No being parked somewhere and forgotten while a staff member handles three other passengers. You go when you are ready, at your own pace, on your own.
The Canadian piece
This matters here, not just in headlines from abroad. Winnipeg Richardson International Airport in Manitoba is already running WHILL autonomous chairs, in partnership with WHILL and Scootaround Personal Transportation Solutions. Winnipeg began trialling them in 2019 as the first airport in North America to do so, and the airport says it is now the first location on the continent to run the technology as a full-time service. That makes Canada one of the countries where this is live, not coming-soon.
Abroad, the spread is quick. WHILL is assisting American Airlines passengers in Los Angeles and Miami and Alaska Airlines passengers in Seattle. Schiphol in Amsterdam has ten chairs in extended testing. Heathrow is trialling them in Terminal 3 with ABM, the largest provider of assisted travel services in the UK, a deployment WHILL announced on 3 June 2026 after, in its words, “just over a month” in operation. Tokyo and Osaka have had them for a while.
If this works at Winnipeg, there is no technical reason it cannot run at Pearson, Vancouver, Calgary, or Montreal. The question is whether Canadian airports and airlines choose to fund it. That is worth raising with them directly, because passenger demand is part of how these decisions get made.
Why this is a real access shift, not a gadget
Airport mobility assistance in its current form puts you on someone else’s schedule. You request a wheelchair, you wait, you are handed off between staff, and the whole time your independence depends on staffing levels that are often stretched thin. Missed connections and long waits are common. For a lot of travellers with disabilities, the wheelchair-assistance system is the single most stressful part of flying.
A chair that comes when you call it and goes where you tell it removes the handoff. It puts the timing back in your hands. That is a structural change in who controls the experience, and it is the part worth being genuinely interested in.
The honest limits
A few things to keep in mind before you assume this solves everything.
These chairs move within the terminal, between points the airport has mapped, and how much of the journey they cover varies by airport. Winnipeg is at the fuller end: the airport describes the service as taking travellers from the airline check-in counters, through security, and to the departure gate. What none of them do is get you to the terminal or onto the plane. They are not a door-to-door solution, and boarding the aircraft still relies on aisle chairs and staff. Check what your airport’s deployment actually covers rather than assuming it matches Winnipeg’s.
They suit people who can transfer into a standard seated chair and ride. If you travel in your own power chair, which is fitted to your body and your needs, an airport loaner is not a replacement, and the real fight there is still about airlines damaging power chairs in the hold. That problem is not solved by anything in this story.
Touchscreen-only controls also raise their own access questions. A screen with no tactile or audio option is a barrier for blind and low-vision travellers. It is worth asking each airport what alternatives they offer.
What to do with this
If you are flying through Winnipeg, you can use these now, and you do not need to arrange anything in advance. The airport says travellers can request a self-driving wheelchair when checking in at their airline’s counter, or by going to the WHILL station on the Departures Level, near the domestic and international oversized baggage drop.
If you are flying through any other Canadian airport, ask anyway. Ask whether they are planning autonomous mobility, and tell them you would use it. Airports track accessibility requests, and self-driving chairs get funded where there is visible demand and a competitor across the country already offering it.
The technology has crossed from trial to service. The remaining barrier in Canada is not whether it works. It is whether the airport you fly through decides to pay for it. That is a barrier passengers can actually move.
Sources: AARP, “Robotic Airport Wheelchairs Make Getting to Your Gate a Breeze”; Winnipeg Airports Authority, “YWG becomes first location in North America to implement WHILL’s self-driving wheelchair service”; Runway Girl Network, “WHILL trials autonomous mobility at London Heathrow T3,” June 2026; WHILL, “WHILL Expands Global Autonomous Mobility Network with Heathrow Airport Launch,” 3 June 2026; WHILL, “Self-Driving Wheelchairs Bring Travelers to Their Gate at Schiphol Airport”; Winnipeg Airports Authority, WHILL accessibility service
