BBC reporter with disability stuck on plane after landing

Frank Gardner, a BBC journalist, expressed outrage at being left on a plane after landing at Gatwick.

The security correspondent who uses a wheelchair was stranded on the aircraft after flying to West Sussex Airport with Iberia Express on Thursday night.

A passenger with restricted mobility died at Gatwick on 15 June. He fell while he was walking up an escalator after leaving an aircraft without a helper.

Gardner has been left on planes at UK airports several times in the last few years.

During the latest incident, he posted an image on Twitter from inside the aircraft with no other passengers in sight.

He wrote: FFS not again! Just back from the exhausting week covering the Nato summit in Madrid and quelle surprise, I am still stuck on the plane at Gatwick.

The crew of Iberia are gone and a new crew has come on board.

Why are UK airports so bad at getting disabled people off planes? He said it never happens abroad, only in the UK. Gardner wrote : "Off the plane now only a 20 minute delay, which is mild but ground handlers said nobody told us there was a disabled passenger onboard. All in all, so tedious and boring!" A Gatwick spokeswoman said: We apologise for the delay Mr Gardner experienced on this occasion.

We have been working closely with our assistance provider, Wilson James, to determine the reasons for this.

There was no special assistance from the airline for Mr Gardner at this stage.

The team responded as soon as we were made aware and Mr Gardner received assistance within 20 minutes.

We will continue to look into this with Wilson James and the airline concerned to provide the best possible service to all passengers.

We apologise again for any delay that Mr. Gardner experienced returning from the Nato summit in Madrid. Gardner was partially paralysed after Al Qaeda gunmen shot him in Saudi Arabia in 2004.