'I was made to feel like a burden at Heathrow'

A disability rights activist and her mum have said they were made to feel like a “burden” by Heathrow Airport and British Airways (BA) staff because of their disabilities.

Jo and Amy Pohl got back to the UK on Monday after a holiday in the US. They then took another BA flight, a domestic service from Heathrow to Newcastle.

The pair said they were made to feel “undignified” at every stage from airport security until boarding the plane at Terminal Five.

BA and Heathrow Airport have apologised for the treatment of the women and say they are investigating what went wrong.

Amy, who is based in Hartlepool and has more than three million TikTok followers, is a full-time wheelchair user due to a condition called thoracic spinal degeneration.

Jo, who lives in Rugby, walks with a crutch due to a degenerative condition affecting her joints.

“We had so many issues as soon as we got through the doors,” Amy told BBC News.

They arrived in the terminal 20 minutes before their check-in opened, when Amy said her mum was “really struggling” with joint pain following their transatlantic flight.

She said she asked a member of staff if they could help find a chair for Jo and was allegedly told: “She can sit on the floor.”

Amy said: “I went back to my mum and I told her this but luckily somebody had seen her struggling and they offered her a seat.”

The pair said they faced a 90-minute wait to access the security screening designated for people with disabilities and their associated equipment.

Jo said she was then asked to get out of a wheelchair that had been provided by the airport, and to hand over her crutch to be scanned - which is normal procedure - but they failed to give her a temporary walking aid.

Then, Jo said, she tried to go to the front of the queue security scanner queue only to be told to go to the back by a staff member, to which she replied: "I've got no crutch, I'll fall over." Another customer then let her cut in, she said.

After the scanner bleeped, Jo said she was patted down, still without her crutch, causing her to "wobble all over the place".

Jo added the staff "lacked empathy" towards her.

They said they arrived at the boarding gate about 45 minutes before their flight was due to leave, to check about their special assistance boarding.

Amy said: "Instead of talking to me, she (the member of staff) talked to my assistant and said, 'can they walk?' in front of everyone.

"She could have just looked at me and asked: do you have any access needs to get on this plane?"

They said they were then told by the boarding agent there was no record of the pre-booked special assistance, which had been arranged in April.

"I told them downstairs about five times that I need an aisle chair. And I double-checked and they said it was going to be ready waiting for me when I need to get on the plane," Amy said.

Amy also said she was "promised" she would be boarded first, which is standard practice for passengers who require help getting on a plane.

They said they were then told if they went down in a lift, the special assistance staff would meet them to board first.

"Just as we came out of the lift we could see a flood of people coming down the escalator and on to the plane," Amy said.

She added: "My heart just dropped."

Only one of the two people required to help Amy on to the plane then arrived with the aisle chair.

"He was apologetic and he was really the only person that day that showed me any empathy," Amy said.

A second person eventually arrived to help Amy board the already-full plane, she said.

Jo said: "So she had to go through a sea of people - I could hear people tutting and rolling their eyes as we're going down."

She said the treatment they received over their disabilities, from check-in to boarding, was "undignified".

"You feel like a piece of meat and you feel like a burden," Jo added.

Amy said she would like to see an agency established to better hold organisations to account that provide services to disabled people.

A BA spokesperson said: "We’re sorry for the unacceptable experience our customers had and don’t underestimate the impact it will have had on them.

"We have been in touch with our customers directly to apologise and assure them we are investigating this issue urgently."

They added BA was "committed to learning from these incidents".

A Heathrow Airport spokesperson said: “We want Heathrow to be a welcoming and accessible airport for every passenger and we are very disappointed that the service provided on this occasion didn’t meet our standards.

"We are conducting a review with our accessibility service partner to understand what went wrong. We deeply apologise for the distress caused."

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