BBC journalist crawls to toilet mid-flight after airline denies wheelchair access
A BBC journalist was left dishonored after being forced to crawl to the toilet during a LOT Polish Airlines flight from Poland to London, as the airline refused to provide an onboard wheelchair. Frank Gardner, BBC's security correspondent, shared his experience on X (formerly Twitter), calling out the airline's policy, which he described as discriminatory against disabled passengers.
Gardner, who has been paralyzed for over 20 years following a shooting by Al-Qaeda gunmen in Saudi Arabia, expressed his frustration in a 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... as ‘we don’t have onboard wheelchairs. It’s airline policy.’ If you’re disabled and can’t walk, this is just discriminatory," he wrote, alongside a photo of himself sitting on the plane’s floor.
In a detailed account on the BBC, Gardner explained that the ordeal was both physically uncomfortable and degrading. "It was humiliating to shuffle along the floor of an aircraft in front of other passengers in my suit," he said, adding that LOT Polish Airlines informed him it was not their policy to provide onboard aisle chairs. He criticized the airline for not accommodating disabled passengers, pointing out that such devices are compact and can easily be stored on planes.
Gardner mentioned that he had never faced a similar issue with any other airline and found it astonishing that in 2024, an airline could operate in and out of British airports with a policy that essentially implied disabled passengers unable to walk were not allowed to use the toilet during the flight.
Although Gardner was critical of the airline, he defended the cabin crew, stating that they were as helpful and apologetic as possible. He acknowledged that the situation was not their fault but a result of the airline’s policy, and mentioned that he would refrain from flying with LOT Polish Airlines until they "join the 21st century."
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Pakistan reports two more polio cases; Total tally now 52
ISLAMABAD: At least two more cases of poliovirus were reported in Pakistan, taking the number of infections to 52 so far this year, a report said on Friday.
“The Regional Reference Laboratory for Polio Eradication at the National Institute of Health has confirmed the detection of two more wild poliovirus type 1 (WPV1) cases in Pakistan," an official statement said.
The fresh infections — a boy and a girl — were reported from the Dera Ismail Khan district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province.
“Genetic sequencing of the samples collected from the children is underway," the statement read. Dera Ismail Khan, one of the seven polio-endemic districts of southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, has reported five polio cases so far this year.
Of the 52 cases in the country this year, 24 are from Balochistan, 13 from Sindh, 13 from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and one each from Punjab and Islamabad.
There is no cure for polio. Only multiple doses of the oral polio vaccine and completion of the routine vaccination schedule for all children under the age of five can keep them protected.
