Why are wheelchair-users left on planes?

Taken from: Frank Gardner: 'It happened again' - Why are wheelchair-users left on planes? (BBC)
"This is now the fourth time that this has happened to me in just over four years," Frank sighs.
For Frank, while his tweets might seem a harmless way to express frustration, they have been effective at making change happen in the past.
After a tweet in 2018 about this very situation - being left on a plane - the BBC journalist forced Heathrow to change its policy which is why wheelchairs are now delivered to plane doors rather than the terminal, even if it doesn't always work.
He says he has further ideas on how this system can be improved.
"To me, this is about allocating the right resources where they're needed," he says, suggesting the departure airport could inform the destination airport that a passenger might need assistance, before the plane has even left the ground.
"That would be a way of pre-empting this," Frank says. "It's not that they don't care, but it is a huge busy airport and they are frankly, not at the moment, up to the task of giving disabled passengers the service that they deserve."
After his latest apology from Heathrow, Frank quickly updated his followers: "Clearly still a way to go to stop this happening. Every time it happens to me it's happening to others around the UK."
Over to you...
Has this ever happened to you?Do you have a good or bad experience of using airport assistance?
What would make the flying experience more relaxing for you?
Comments
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I have a couple of bad experiences from when I was younger on family holidays, I had two manual chairs over the course of several years, and both were damaged after being squashed in the hold.
My very first manual chair had a chunk taken out of one of the arm rests, and one of the break levers was pushed out of joint so that it no longer worked.
My second chair also got damaged, in that the bars of the seat wouldn't fit so snugly when trying to open the chair and put the cushion in. Frustrating, but technically still usable according to the airline.
I think I would feel more relaxed if I knew there was a very low risk of damage to my chair, or in fact if I could see my chair from the plane seat, and it could be stored safely with the passengers rather than in the hold. But they way planes are designed I'm not sure that's possible?0 -
This has happened to me more times than I can mention. For me, it is the only anxiety-inducing aspect of flying.
The worst time I can remember was when I was about 12 years old. We landed in Heathrow but my wheelchair went to Johannesburg. It had been put on the wrong plane in Delhi.0
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