Journalist Frank Gardner has hit out at Heathrow airport after being kept on a plane for nearly two hours after staff claimed to have lost his wheelchair.
The BBC correspondent criticised how the airport treated disabled people after he was left stranded on the plane on when staff took his wheelchair to the terminal instead of to the plane door.
Mr Gardner was returning from a trip to Ethiopia when he was told staff had “lost his wheelchair.”
Speaking about the incident to the BBC, he said: “That is your legs gone. It is a basic human right."
According to reports Mr Gardner was kept waiting on the plane for 100 minutes as staff attempted to relocate his wheelchair.
In a series of tweets the journalist accused the airline of having a “casual disregard” for disabled passengers.
He said he was “utterly sick” of airport staff repeatedly losing his wheelchair.
Mr Gardner told BBC Radio 4’s today programme: “There are hundreds, possibly thousands of others who have this experience and all we get is these platitudes from Heathrow Airport, calling me by my first name and saying they have created a case number for you.
"Nothing changes, it goes on and on happening and it is just so frustrating."
He added: "If you can't walk and your wheelchair has been taken away to the terminal, that is your legs gone, that is your mobility gone.
"It is a basic human right so I am pretty seething about it."
The BBC correspondent began using a wheelchair in 2004 after he was shot six times by militants while reporting in Saudi Arabia.
A spokesman for Heathrow Airport said: “We apologise unreservedly if the service Mr Gardner received today fell short of the experience we aim to provide to our passengers.
"We are working with the responsible airline to investigate what went wrong in this case."
