A disabled conflict correspondent was pressured to crawl to the lavatory on a latest London-bound flight as a result of the airline bans wheelchairs, he mentioned.
BBC journalist Frank Gardner, 63, shared the degrading ordeal on X Monday.
“Wow. It’s 2024 and I’ve simply needed to crawl alongside the ground of this LOT Polish airline to get to the bathroom throughout a flight again from Warsaw as ‘we don’t have onboard wheelchairs. It’s airline coverage,’” Gardner mentioned.
“When you’re disabled and you’ll’t stroll that is simply discriminatory,” added the veteran journo, who was shot and paralyzed by al Qaeda gunmen in Saudi Arabia 20 years in the past.
The put up was accompanied by a photograph of Gardner’s legs on the ground of the airplane.
“In equity to the cabin crew, they had been as useful and apologetic as they could possibly be. Not their fault, it’s the airline. Received’t be flying LOT once more till they be a part of the twenty first century,” Gardner wrote in a follow-up put up.
He additionally mentioned the “inhumane” incident on “BBC Breakfast” Tuesday.
“It’s outrageous when it comes to air journey that LOT, the Polish airline I traveled on from Warsaw final evening again to London, had no onboard aisle chair,” Gardner lamented.
“I mentioned, ‘Nicely, how do you anticipate me to go to the toilet?’ ‘Nicely, we may also help you.’
“Nicely, probably not, as a result of if anyone drags you to the toilet it’s too troublesome. I needed to crawl on my bottom alongside the ground — which wasn’t notably clear — of the plane,” he mentioned.
“The cabin crew had been very embarrassed and so they had been as useful as they may — there was a very nice steward there who was incredible. He was capable of take my legs.
“However the level is, guys, it’s not troublesome to have an onboard aisle chair. These items fold as much as the scale of a pram, if not smaller, and so they match into an overhead locker or into a cabinet.”
