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A disabled war correspondent claims he had to crawl to the bathroom on a London-bound flight because the airline had a wheelchair ban, according to a report.
BBC journalist Frank Gardner, 63, made that claim on social-media site X on Monday, per the New York Post.
“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 said.
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“If you’re disabled and you can’t walk this is just discriminatory. 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 said he asked cabin crew how they expected him to get to the loo.
The crew offered to help him, but he declined.
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“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 was shot and paralyzed by al-Qaeda gunmen in Saudi Arabia 20 years ago.
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