Ryanair has been heavily criticized online after a man racially abused a woman with black skin when she refused to move from her assigned seat. The woman abused (known as Mrs. Gayle) is a 77-year-old woman from East London while the man abusing her is a who is currently unknown but let’s call him “Dave”
Dave and Mrs. Gayle had just boarded their Ryanair flight from Barcelona to London when Dave was not happy with a black woman sitting on the aisle seat while he was in the window. He then started threatening her with the abusive language being quoted saying “I tell you this, if you don’t go to another seat I’ll push you to another seat,” and “Don’t talk to me in a foreign language, you stupid ugly cow,”. Passengers then intervened by shouting at the abuser and trying to stop his remarks. Even after passengers noted that Mrs. Gayle was, in fact, disabled the man kept shouting and abusing her. The woman was then asked if Mrs. Gayle would like to move seats, she obliged and sat next to her daughter. Dave was not removed from the Boeing 737-800 aircraft and told a flight attendant “he was good”. The flight took off and landed into London as usual.
Ryanair has been criticized after not taking any action when in many people’s opinions Dave should have been removed from the aircraft. After landing Essex police were informed however the man walked off the aircraft as everyone else did. The video of the abuse has been viewed over 3 million times with most arguing that the man in question shouldn’t have even been allowed into the sky. These kinds of incidents are unfortunately not rare however I think Ryanair need to pick up a lot of the blame due to swift action simply not happening
Yeah, he should’ve been taken off the plane. Unacceptable behavior. For more information, “Dave” was trying to get to his window seat, Mrs. Gayle was already sitting in the aisle seat. Mrs. Gayle has arthritis, and had trouble moving quickly, and this sparked the outburst. Again, disgusting behavior.
Ryanair probably didn’t remove the person from the aicraft as that would cause more drama, with the police likely being involved. They wouldn’t want to be in the news for dragging someone of an airplane, no matter why as news agencies like The Sun would probably make it look like it was Ryanair’s fault. It is really a no-win situation here.
In perspective to the law, this is harassment and I hope ‘Dave’ will be dealt accordingly with the authorities.
I just heard this story on BBC this morning. There’s a famous story I’ve heard in the past, I’m not sure if it’s truth or legend. A captain removed a black gentleman from his seat because the woman seated next to the black gentleman was making racist comments to him, so the captain moved the man to first class. I love this story and would have really enjoyed hearing more intervention on Ryanair’s part.
As an African-American myself, it shocks me to see that this still happens. In one case you could think that maybe Ryanair’s goal was to prevent any other altercations from occurring by moving her away from the threatening and racist passenger, yet it is unacceptable to see this in the society we live in.
I saw this and everyone in my family was utterly disgusted especially given the woman lost her husband a year back and was taken on holiday to cheer her up. The reasoning as to why that idiot wasn’t removed was likely because it would delay the flight and in typical Ryanair fashion that’s a big no no.
Given that the incident happened on the ground in Barcelona, yet it was reported after landing to Essex police, I don’t think any legal prosecution will come of this, as no U.K. law was broken (due to it happening in Spain).
Probably financial reasons, since he wasn’t being violent, they figured they might as well cash in the flight. LLCs make their money when their planes are flying. Grounded planes for police reasons aren’t bringing in a profit.
As Michael O’Leary (Ryanair’s CEO) says, ‘Any PR is good PR’. Nearly every news article (good or bad)will mention the low costs of Ryanair’s flights, which will always lead to bookings. Ryanair doesn’t care about their public image.
