Disabled passenger waited an hour for his wheelchair at Heathrow

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The UK's Heathrow Airport is once again in the news for it's "casual disregard" for disabled passengers.

Frank Gardner, 56, landed at Heathrow, on a return trip from Ethiopia on Saturday morning, when his wheelchair was been delivered to the terminal instead of the plane door. Heathrow staff then spent almost 70 minutes locating his wheelchair before bringing it to the plane.

Frank's post soon got mount of attention in UK./Screenshot from Frank Gardner's Twitter

Frank has depended on a wheelchair since he was shot six times in an al-Qaeda gun attack in Saudi Arabia in 2004, which almost paralyzed his legs.

In a tweet, he told his 78,000 followers, “Odd that I can travel round the Middle East and elsewhere without a hitch. Yet time and again @HeathrowAirport loses my wheelchair on arrival. Now been on an empty plane 70 minutes after landing.”

Later, Frank told Radio 4, “I am not making this fuss about this for me. I am doing it because there are hundreds, possibly thousands of others who suffer the same experience.”

Actually, it is the third time he has been stranded on an airplane. Last month, Gardner suffered a similar situation when an airport left him without his wheelchair for about one hour.

Soon, he posted another Twitter when staffs at the airport still didn't find the wheelchair./ Screenshot from Frank Gardner's Twitter

John Holland-Kaye, Chief Executive Officer of Heathrow, told the Independent that the airport's goal is to help disabled passengers disembark the airport within 20 minutes of landing after everybody else has gotten off.

“We want to be seen as the best airport in the world for passenger service. We have made huge improvements, but clearly we have more to do, and I’m committed to doing that.”

Frank’s complains stirred controversy in the UK about the issues people have faced when traveling through airports in the country.

A BBC 5 program hosted by Stephen Nolan was inundated with calls and texts from viewers sharing their experiences at UK airports. A caller identifying himself as Adam, said that his mother was once forced to walk from an aircraft after the airport misplaced her wheelchair, which resulted in her being hospitalized again.

In response, a Heathrow spokesperson apologized, “We apologized unreservedly if the service Mr. Gardener 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.”

Airlines companies are obliged to provide assistance to disabled passengers and contact ground handlers to look after them upon landing, according to the Civil Aviation Authority.