A Paralympian and disability rights campaigner was ‘neglected’ and left to wait on a plane for 45 minutes after airport ground staff failed to take her off the plane.
Anne Wafula-Strike travelled on a Ryanair flight to Stansted on Friday from Berlin after returning home from the world para athletics European championships, and says she had booked assistance to get on and off the plane a month in advance.
But when the plane landed two hours late was left waiting as the other passenger left.
Anne Wafula-Strike (pictured) travelled on a Ryanair flight to Stansted on Friday from Berlin after returning home from the world para athletics European championships, and says she had booked assistance to get on and off the plane a month in advance
She wrote on Twitter: ‘Like @FrankRGardner I was forgotten on @Ryanair last night at @STN_Airport for a long time because I needed assistance that was booked weeks in advance .. then I had to wait for luggage for longer than the flight.’
When a ground staff member eventually turned up they told her that they were short staffed and had not realised her flight had arrived.
Mrs Wafula-Strike, 49, from Harlow in Essex, told the BBC: ‘I felt angry and very neglected, it’s not good when you are abandoned on a flight and everyone else is picking up their bags and walking off.
‘That’s the time you start to think “I wish I could just walk like them and get my luggage and walk off the plane” but I have to rely on assistance to get off, it was bad.’
She wrote on Twitter: ‘Like @FrankRGardner I was forgotten on @Ryanair last night at @STN_Airport for a long time because I needed assistance that was booked weeks in advance .. then I had to wait for luggage for longer than the flight’
‘When someone like me speaks up or raises their voice people will think it is only happening to one or two people but it is becoming a common occurrence for people with disabilities to be left neglected on planes or not able to get into trains.
‘These things should not be happening when men have walked on the moon.’
Mrs Wafula-Strike, 49, said : ‘I felt angry and very neglected, it’s not good when you are abandoned on a flight and everyone else is picking up their bags and walking off’
A spokesman for the airport added: ‘We are disappointed to hear about Anne’s experience at Stansted on Friday evening.
‘We are in the process of investigating how such a situation arose and have asked Omniserv, the company responsible for looking after passengers with reduced mobility, for a full explanation of why Anne had to wait for such a long time on the aircraft.’
Just two weeks ago BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner, who also uses a wheelchair, was left stranded on an empty plane at Heathrow after bungling staff locked themselves inside a cabin.
The broadcaster was eventually forced to put his wheelchair through a plane window to get off the British Airwaysflight. He called the incident ‘absurd’.
It comes five months after the 57-year-old was left stranded for nearly two hours after Heathrow lost his wheelchair.
The journalist lost the use of his legs in 2004 after being shot six times by militants while reporting in Saudi Arabia.