United Airlines Apologizes After Disabled Man Crawls Off Flight

(CNN)- A man returning from a meeting about disabled accessibility policies arrived home with a very personal example of the problem.

D'Arcee Neal, who has cerebral palsy, took a five-hour flight from San Francisco to Washington last week. A mix-up at the gate meant there was no wheelchair to help the 29-year-old off the plane, so he was told to wait for one to be found.

The problem was Neal needed to use the restroom. His disability made it too difficult to use the one on the plane. He had already waited more than 15 minutes for the rest of the passengers to disembark, and the wait for an aisle chair -- a narrow, specialized wheelchair to take disabled passengers down the airplane aisle -- had now lasted another 15 minutes.

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"I was trying to get them to understand that this is why I don't want to wait another 15 to 20 minutes," Neal said.

After being told repeatedly to wait, Neal said, he couldn't any longer. He said he got out of his seat and as the flight attendants watched, he crawled his way up the aisle and to the gangway, where a wheelchair was then ready.

"I expected them to ask to assist me, but they just stared," he said.

A United spokesman said an aisle chair was at the gate when Neal's plane arrived but removed by mistake before it was Neal's turn to disembark.

"As customers began to exit the aircraft, we made a mistake and told the agent with the aisle chair that it was no longer needed, and it was removed from the area," the airline said in a statement. "When we realized our error -- that Mr. Neal was onboard and needed the aisle chair -- we arranged to have it brought back, but it arrived too late."

Neal worked for years as a disability advocate for nonprofits and now works for the federal government. He was in San Francisco for a meeting with the car-hire company Uber to discuss accessibility policies.