A white man unloaded a racist tirade against an elderly black woman on a flight from Barcelona, Spain to London, over assigned seating. Although a Ryanair crew member intervened in the incident, the flight crew ultimately turned a blind eye and proceeded to depart to its destination.
Now, after the video footage of the incident went viral, the European airline is under fire for doing nothing.
In the video, which was posted by London-based musician David Lawrence on Friday, a man in a window seat is heard hollering at an 77-year-old Jamaican immigrant in an aisle seat, calling her a “ugly black bastard” among other “disgusting, despicable words,” over the seating arrangement.
“I heard this man shouting at this woman, saying, ‘You’re in my way, get out! I don’t want you here next to me,’” Lawrence told The Washington Post of the incident. “I couldn’t believe what I heard.”
As the incident escalated, the woman’s daughter confronted the man in her mother’s defense, as a flight attendant attempted to defuse the entire ordeal.
“She said, ‘Who are you talking to? Don’t shout at her, that’s my mother, she’s disabled,” Lawrence recalled of the exchange between the daughter and the racist man. “He then was saying, ‘I don’t care.’”
However, unable to calm down the unruly white man, the flight attendant offered the black woman a new seat.
“Put her to another seat!” The man yelled, as he turned to the woman and said, “I tell you this. If you don’t go to another seat, I’ll put you to another seat!”
When the woman responded, he screamed, “Don’t talk to me in a f*cking foreign language, you stupid ugly cow!” Adding, “Ugly black bastard!”
Eventually, other passengers attempted to intervene, while Lawrence suggested the man be tossed off the flight. But, to his surprise, after the women switched seats, the flight proceeded to depart to its destination without repercussions for the racist man.
“I thought the flight attendant was going to call someone and escort the man off the flight,” Lawrence said. “They moved the woman instead of moving him. That was shocking to me.”
Although much wasn’t done in the moment, Lawrence uploaded the footage to social media to spread awareness. In fact, since then, the video received over 3 million views and has been shared tens of thousands of times.
In response to the backlash, the airline released a statement via twitter, revealing it had reported the incident to Essex Police.
“We operate strict guidelines for disruptive passengers and we will not tolerate unruly behavior like this,” Ryanair said in a statement to BBC News. “We will be taking this matter further and disruptive or abusive behavior like this will result in passengers being banned from travel.”
