Disabled UK journalist forced to crawl to flight bathroom as there’s no wheelchair: ‘Wow. It’s 2024 and…’
Frank Gardner, a war correspondent for the BBC, was asked to crawl to the washroom on a LOT Polish Airlines flight as the airline did not have any wheelchair. Posting the photo of his legs as he crawled to the bathroom, he wrote, “Wow. It’s 2024 and I’ve just had to crawl along the floor of this LOT Polish airline to get to the toilet during a flight back from Warsaw as ‘we don’t have onboard wheelchairs.It’s airline policy’. If you’re disabled and you can’t walk this is just discriminatory.”
63-year-old Gardner was shot and paralyzed by al Qaeda gunman in Saudi Arabia 20 years ago.
Gardner protected the cabin crew and said they were very apologetic for his inconvenience and it was the airline that should be pulled up. “In fairness to the cabin crew, they were as helpful and apologetic as they could be. Not their fault, it’s the airline. Won’t be flying LOT again until they join the 21st century,” Gardner wrote. He also discussed the inhumane incident on BBC Breakfast Tuesday.
At the program, he said it was outrageous that there was no onboard aisle chair on LOT. He said when he asked how was he supposed to go to the washroom, the crew said they would help him. “Well, not really, because if somebody drags you to the loo it’s too difficult. I had to crawl on my backside along the floor — which wasn’t particularly clean — of the aircraft,” he said.
“The cabin crew were very embarrassed and they were as helpful as they could — there was a really nice steward there who was fantastic. He was able to take my legs.
“But the point is, guys, it’s not difficult to have an onboard aisle chair. These things fold up to the size of a pram, if not smaller, and they fit into an overhead locker or into a cupboard,” Gardner said.
