Paralympic star Anne ‘abandoned’ on plane
A BRITISH Paralympian has told how she was “neglected” by airport staff who left her stranded in an empty plane after she returned home from a competition.
Wheelchair racer Anne Wafula Strike said she was left “profoundly distressed” after she was “forgotten about” and left waiting for 45 minutes on board a Ryanair jet which had landed at Stansted.
Mrs Wafula Strike, 49, said she had booked assistance a month before leaving for the World Para Athletics European Championships in Berlin.
She said: “I felt angry and very neglected. It’s not good when you are abandoned on a flight and everyone else is picking up their bags and walking off.
“That’s the time you start to think ‘I wish I could just walk like them and get my luggage and walk off the plane’ but I have to rely on assistance to get off, it was bad.”
The ordeal happened on Friday after her Ryanair flight landed two hours late due to storms.
Mrs Wafula Strike, who had polio as a child and went without food and water during her wait, said the problem led to delays for the aircraft’s next flight back to Berlin as passengers could not board because she was still inside. During the wait, her phone battery ran out and she was forced to borrow a portable charger so she could order a taxi to pick her up.
A worker who arrived to help the Kenyan-born athlete said they were short-staffed and had been unsure that her flight had arrived.
Mrs Wafula Strike, of Harlow, Essex, said: “The crew were just looking at me and they were just sympathetic, everyone was sympathetic. It wasn’t a problem of Ryanair, the problem was with the people on the ground.
“Being left alone on the plane after all the hassles of flight delays and depriving myself of fluids to avoid needing to go to the toilet, I felt neglected and desperate as well as profoundly distressed.”
She compared the ordeal to the experience of wheelchair-bound BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner who has been stranded at Heathrow twice in the past six months.
Ryanair said a company called Omniserv was responsible for assisting disabled passengers. An airport spokesman said: “We are disappointed to hear about Anne’s experience.”