• Gardner, who has been paralyzed for over 20 years.
• He argued that the airline’s policy prohibits onboard aisle chairs.
• Gardner defended the cabin crew, stating that they were following the policy and not their fault.

In a post on X, journalist Frank Gardner recounted his experience of crawling to the toilet on a flight because the airline’s outdated policy prevented them from providing him with a wheelchair.

In a post on X, Frank Gardner, the BBC’s security correspondent, stated that the airline did not provide him with a wheelchair to move around on his flight from Poland to London.

“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”. If you’re disabled and you can’t walk this is just discriminatory,” he wrote, sharing a photo of him sitting on the plane’s floor.

Gardner has been paralyzed for over 20 years after al-Qaeda gunmen shot him in Saudi Arabia while he was on assignment.

In a lengthy post on the BBC, the journalist shared his ordeal, describing the entire episode as both physically uncomfortable and degrading.

“It was humiliating to have to shuffle along the floor of an aircraft in front of other passengers in my suit,” he said,

He said that Polish Airlines LOT told him that it was not its policy to have onboard aisle chairs. “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,” he said.

The veteran journalist and author stated that he has never encountered a similar situation on a flight with another airline.

“This is 2024, not 1970, and I find it extraordinary that an airline is allowed to fly in and out of British airports with a policy that effectively says ‘if you can’t walk, you can’t go to the toilet on our planes,” he said.

However, Gardener defended the cabin crew, saying that they were only following the policy. “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,” he said.

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