Disabled BBC journalist Frank Gardner accused Heathrow Airport of discrimination today after waiting more than 90 minutes to be taken off on a plane after it landed.
The BBC News security correspondent has been in a wheelchair since 2004 when he was paralysed after being shot six times by Al Qaeda gunmen in Saudi Arabia.
The 63-year-old landed from Singapore on a British Airways plane at Heathrow’s Terminal Five at 6.45am this morning following a flight lasting more than 13 hours.
But as other passengers walked down the stairs of the Boeing 777 to waiting buses to take them to the terminal building, Mr Gardner was kept waiting for assistance.
Ground staff from Heathrow contractor Wilson James normally meet planes arriving at remote stands to help disabled passengers disembark on a medical lift. Most arriving planes are linked to the terminal with airbridges, so a lift is not required.
But Mr Gardner was kept waiting for one hour and 35 minutes after the last passenger left – with the captain insisting he would wait on board the plane until he was off.
He posted a photo of the plane’s open doors on X, saying: ‘Annoyed to find that Heathrow Airport is slipping back into its old bad habits, leaving disabled passengers still waiting for a high-lift to turn up so we can get off the plane, long after all others have disembarked. Other airports can manage. C’mon Heathrow, get a grip!’
Gardner added 20 minutes later: ‘Just to be clear, this is not the airline’s fault. BA crew have been brilliant, Captain refusing to leave the plane til I’m off.
‘But it’s now approaching an hour we’re waiting for the high lift to turn up. it’s so discriminatory by Heathrow Airport twds disabled passengers.’
Heathrow then responded, saying: ‘Good morning Frank. We are sorry to hear this, we can confirm that passengers who requested the high lift are asked to wait for others passengers to disembark first. If you would like us to look into your experience further, please kindly DM us.’
But Gardner replied: ‘You are missing the point. The high lift hasn’t turned up.’
Speaking later to , Gardner said: ‘It certainly wasn’t great that after a 13 to 14 hour overnight flight from Singapore – which was a work trip – I then had to wait a further 90 minutes to disembark because the airport couldn’t find a high lift truck to get me off the plane with my wheelchair.
‘I watched the captain phone the people responsible repeatedly and then say ‘no one’s answering’. To be fair, this doesn’t happen every time, and the ground handling staff are always helpful and courteous, but in 2025 it shouldn’t be happening at all.
‘For every person like me who goes public when this happens how many others are putting up with it in silence?
‘This comes down to a need for better allocation of resources and better communication between the airport and the ground handlers. I very rarely encounter these problems in other airports in the world.’
A Heathrow spokesperson told : ‘We are extremely sorry for the delay Mr Gardner experienced. This was due to the team responding to a medical emergency, which reduced the number of vehicles available but we are very sorry for the inconvenience caused.
‘As a gesture of goodwill, we have offered to cover the cost of the additional waiting time for his car. We continue to work hard to ensure all passengers enjoy a smooth and seamless experience when travelling through Heathrow.’
has contacted Wilson James for comment.
Last October, Mr Gardner criticised LOT Polish Airlines after he was forced to ‘crawl on the floor’ to reach a plane toilet because of a lack of onboard wheelchairs.
He said at the time that it was ‘degrading’ and ‘physically deeply uncomfortable’, adding that it was ‘humiliating’ to have to ‘shuffle along the floor’ in his suit on the flight from Warsaw to London.
LOT responded by saying it was ‘deeply sorry’ for Mr Gardner’s ‘distressing experience’, adding that it was ‘testing solutions’ to equip short-haul aircraft with onboard wheelchairs.
And in 2018, Mr Gardner criticised Heathrow after being kept on an Ethiopian Airlines flight from Addis Ababa for nearly two hours because staff said they had lost his wheelchair.
He later met the airport’s then-chief executive John Holland-Kaye to discuss improvements.