A British woman who is paralysed from the waist down had to drag herself down an aircraft aisle to go to the loo when cabin crew refused to help.
The husband of Jennie Berry, originally from Durham, recorded her dragging herself to the toilet.
It was her only option as there was no aisle chair available on the plane.
“I asked to go to the toilet and they just said ‘no we don’t have an aisle chair on board’, with no suggestions of what I was to do,” claimed Jennie on Instagram. She added that she had not been on a flight with no aisle chairs – wheelchairs for on board planes – before.
“As you all know – when you have to go, you have to go. Thankfully, I have good upper body strength, so I proceeded to drag myself down the aisle towards the toilet, whilst staff continued to serve drinks,” she added.
She was meant to fly with TUI from Newcastle to Palma but at the last minute, her flight was changed to the Spanish airline AlbaStar. Staff refused to let her sit near the front.
The company told the Olive Press: “Albastar would like to express its sincere apologies for the event that recently took place on one of our flights in relation to the flight experience of a passenger with reduced mobility.
“Our main concern is the safety and comfort of all our passengers on each and every flight we operate.
“We are working to investigate the incident to ensure that this isolated incident does not happen again on any of our aircraft.
“To reply to your request, we must inform you that aisle wheelchairs are not mandatory as per current regulation, not even recommended nor mentioned when talking about aircraft equipment/furnishing.
“On the commented flight, the passengers’ list received before the flight didn’t show the presence of a “Wheelchair C passenger”, meaning Albastar was never informed of the presence of a disabled passenger.”
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