Shelly Woods: airline Lufthansa apologies to Paralympian after her wheelchair left behind

Blackpool’s Paralympic star Shelly Woods hit out on Facebook after her regular wheelchair was left behind during a Lufthansa flight to South Africa.

Multi-medal winner Shelly, 36, was competing in an international wheelchair race and was appalled that the wheelchair, which she calls her “legs”, had somehow not been loaded onto the plane at Frankfurt.

The elite athlete’s racing chair arrived safely but she said she couldn’t get around without her every day one.

German carrier Lufhansa sent her a reply on Facebook telling her they had been alerted to the problem after seeing a Tweet by fellow wheelchair athlete Hannah Cockroft OBE, who slammed the mistake.

An airline representative told Shelly: “Dear Shelly, we've already been made aware of what happened through Hannah Cockroft on Twitter.

"Please accept my sincere apologies for the incident.

"I can well imagine the distress and understand the immense limitations caused through our failure of not having your wheelchair loaded with all other baggage.

"We, as Social Media team, will do our best to help out and assist with the arrangement of the re-delivery to our best possibilities.”

He than asked her to furbish him with her flight reference number on via private message.

On her Facebook page, Shelly had blasted the airline and called its actions “disgusting and inhumane” for sending her on an 11 hour flight to Cape Town, South Africa, and leaving her everyday wheelchair in Frankfurt.

On reading her post, Hannah tweeted: “Hey, Lufthansa, how the hell do you leave a wheelchair in Frankfurt before an 11 hour flight to South Africa and not think twice about it? “Shelly Woods is now stuck in cape town with no independence or freedom to get around. What a way to treat your customers.”

The 30 year old Yorkshire athlete, from Halifax, who holds the world records for the 100 metres, 200 metres, 400 metres, 800 metres and 1500, later added: “Shelly’s chair has only just been out on a flight, it’s been over 24 hours.

"Luckily, another athlete had a chair that they could lend Shelly so that she could move around. Her own wheelchair will arrive tomorrow, almost 72 hours since she left it.”