Last night at Gatwick, a disabled BBC journalist who had previously criticized UK airports for their “consistently cr*p” handling of wheelchair users was left stuck on an empty plane.
Frank Gardner, a security reporter, was left waiting on the jet as it took off from Madrid as the other passengers and personnel left without helping him.
The 60-year-old seasoned journalist claimed he was left without wheelchair assistance after a “exhausting” week of covering the NATO summit in Spain.
While he was compelled to sit in his seat as fresh crew members boarded and began setting up for the upcoming flight, he blasted Gatwick Airport for the “c**p” service.
He claims that since he started using a wheelchair in 2004 and was shot six times by terrorists while doing news reporting in Saudi Arabia, this has happened to him five times.
Mr. Gardner, a wheelchair user, declared: “FFS not again! I’ve just returned from a demanding week covering the NATO summit in Madrid, and surprise, surprise, I’m still stranded in Gatwick airport.
The Iberia crew has left, and a new crew has boarded. Why do UK airports frequently fail to properly disembark disabled passengers off aircraft?
The journalist explained to worried pals online that the problem only only occurs in the UK and that foreign airports never leave him on an aircraft alone.
He continued by saying that although the airline employees cleared off the plane, his producer stayed on board.
Just two months prior, Mr. Gardner experienced a comparable scenario while traveling from Estonia to London’s Heathrow Airport.
At the time, he avoided the airport because it gave “the lowest priority” to passengers with disabilities.
“It’s happened again,” he wrote. No employees to help me get my wheelchair off the plane at Heathrow airport after everyone else has left, so I’m stuck on an empty jet.
I am SO upset with @HeathrowAirport since it appears that travellers with disabilities are once again given the lowest priority.
Mr. Gardner claimed to have been abandoned on planes twice in the course of six months in 2018. Heathrow later apologized and promised to look into the matter.
After Heathrow personnel misplaced his wheelchair and left him stranded on his flight, he claimed at the time that the airport exhibited a “casual contempt for disabled people.”
On March 24, 2018, he claimed that ‘100 minutes’ passed before he could exit his Ethiopian Airlines flight.
Mr. Gardner was left stranded when staff brought his wheelchair to the terminal building rather than the plane’s entrance.
At the time, Heathrow expressed regret. In 2017, he was also abandoned aboard an easyJet flight at Gatwick. Both the airline and the airport promised to look into it.
In 2004, Mr. Gardner was in Saudi Arabia working on a television project with his cameraman Simon Cumbers.
A gang of Al Qaeda supporters opened fire on them six times from close range, killing Cumbers and leaving Gardner for dead.
From the knees down, his legs scarcely register in his body; yet, he can feel and “barely move” his legs above the knee.
Despite his wounds, Mr. Gardner went back to work and in 2005 received an OBE for his contributions to journalism.
He kept reporting from dangerous locations around the world, such as Afghanistan and Colombia.
At the time of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Mr. Garden was the BBC’s Middle East Correspondent. He covered the aftermath, including the start of the War on Terror, for the organization.
The person who killed his colleague, Adel Al-Dhubaiti, was eventually apprehended, given a death sentence, and put to death in Saudi Arabia in January 2016.