A disabled conflict correspondent used to be pressured to move slowly to the toilet on a up to date London-bound gliding since 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 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,’” Gardner mentioned.
“If you’re disabled and you can’t walk this is just discriminatory,” added the veteran journo, who used to be shot and paralyzed through al Qaeda gunmen in Saudi Arabia two decades in the past.
The put up used to be accompanied through a photograph of Gardner’s legs at the flooring of the aircraft.
“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 in a follow-up put up.
He additionally mentioned the “inhumane” incident on “BBC Breakfast” Tuesday.
“It is outrageous in terms of air travel that LOT, the Polish airline I traveled on from Warsaw last night back to London, had no onboard aisle chair,” Gardner lamented.
“I mentioned, ‘Well, how do you expect me to go to the loo?’ ‘Well, we can help you.’
“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 mentioned.
“The cabin team have been very abashment and so they have been as useful as they may — there used to be a actually great steward there who used to be unbelievable. He used to be in a position to remove 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.”
