A disabled war correspondent was forced to crawl to the toilet on a London-bound Polish Airlines flight because the airline bans wheelchairs.
63-year-old BBC journalist Frank Gardner recently shared the humiliating ordeal on X.
“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 wrote.
“If you’re disabled and you can’t walk this is just discriminatory,” added the veteran journo.
The post was accompanied by a photo of Gardner’s legs on the floor of the plane.
Gardner has been paralysed ever since he was shot by al-Qaeda gunmen in Saudi Arabia 20 years ago.
“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 an another post.
"Polish Airlines LOT, which flies in and out of Heathrow, said it was not their policy to have onboard aisle chairs," Gardner wrote in an BBC article. "This is unacceptable for disabled passengers, since these devices are smaller than a pram and can easily fold up to fit into a cupboard or an overhead locker."
In a statement to the BBC, Polish Airlines LOT said it was "deeply sorry for the distressing experience", and that it "sincerely apologises for the inconvenience and discomfort caused by the lack of an onboard wheelchair".
It said that due to "limited space" its short-haul flights do not have onboard wheelchairs, but that the airline understands "the importance of accessibility" and is "actively testing solutions to equip our short-haul aircraft with onboard wheelchairs in the near future".
Gardner reacted to a LOT apology directed to BBC: "So, LOT, the Polish airline that denies disabled passengers the chance to go to the toilet on their Euro flights, has sent an apology letter to BBC Breakfast, not to me," said Gardner on X. "But this is not a 1-off, they did the same thing in May, I just didnt eat or drink before flying with them."