Channel 4 TV star and disability advocate Sophie Morgan has revealed her nightmare flight experience after landing at Heathrow Airport on a British Airways flight
Channel 4 star Sophie Morgan was left stranded on a plane after staff lost her wheelchair.
The 40-year-old TV presenter and disability advocate, who is paralysed from the waist down, was a regular Loose Women panelist until last year. She has moved to the US to focus on her disability campaign work, where she’s had help from Hollywood actress Reese Witherspoon.
Sophie became paraplegic following a car accident at the age of 18 in 2003, where she suffered a T6 spinal cord injury. She now uses a wheelchair and has even made a Channel 4 documentary – Fight to Fly – which highlights the struggles and abuse disabled people face during air travel.
However, she was stuck on board her British Airways flight for over an hour after landing at Heathrow Airport on Thursday (April 10). This is because her wheelchair and power attachment had been lost.
The presenter took to Instagram with a video from inside the plane to share her disappointment at the situation. In the clip, she was seen sat in the aisle seat of the aircraft, with no other passengers around her as they’d already left the plane.
Sophie said: “So I just landed at Heathrow. As you can see, I’m on the plane by myself. I’ve been left here now for an hour. They’ve misplaced my chair. No-one knows where it is and they’re trying to locate it.”
She panned the camera down to her legs and explained: “I can’t move. I’ve been sitting here waiting. I can’t go tot he toilet. The team is somewhere outside I think, trying to get to the bottom of it, but yes. That’s an hour now of sitting here waiting. Don’t know where my chair is, don’t know when I’m getting off. Don’t know what’s going on.”
In the caption of her video, Sophie wrote: “I just landed at Heathrow and my wheelchair and power attachment has been lost and I’ve been stranded on board for over an hour. Ironically, – you can’t make this up – I was on a panel YESTERDAY talking about the current state of air travel for disabled people and today, have flown back to Heathrow from that conference…
She continued: “It goes to show that even though I run a campaign called #RightsOnFlights, have made a documentary for Channel 4 about the abuse disabled people face in air travel (called “Fight to Fly”) and even gave a TedTalk about this problem – I am still not immune to the ableism of this archaic system….no disabled person is.
She urged BA to improve as she added: “British Airways please do better. Please. PLEASE. It’s been 90 mins and I’m still stuck.” Luckily, her wheelchair was located and she updated her followers to let them know the company had apologised to her for the error.
“UPDATE: Chair eventually found – British Airways called to apologise,” she said. Her followers shared her disappointment in the comments and rushed to support her.
One wrote: “Airlines can and need to do better! I can easily track my luggage on the airline app- all airlines should do this tracking for mobility devices too.” Another commented: “As former cabin crew this makes me so disgusted I’m so sorry.”
A statement from BA read: “We’re very sorry that the level of service our customer received on this occasion fell short. We’re urgently investigating what went wrong and are in touch with our customer to put things right.”
They added: “We carry hundreds of thousands of customers who require additional assistance each year and we work hard to provide help and support them throughout the whole journey. It’s extremely disheartening when things go wrong, and we don’t underestimate the impact this has.
“We’re committed to ensuring we deliver a consistently good service, and we’ll be working closely with our customers and our dedicated accessibility teams to discuss how we can continue to make improvements to ensure a great flying experience for everyone.” Daily Star has also contacted Heathrow for comment.
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Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
