David Mesher, the head of racist abuse at Ryanair, attributes the "temptation" of insulting remarks

A man accused of racist abuse against an old black woman on board a Ryanair flight blamed his actions on a "tantrum" and denied being a racist person .

David Mesher gave a television interview on the TV show "Good Morning Britain", aired Friday morning in the UK.

He said: "I am by no means a racist person" and it was "only a tantrum at the time".

Mesher was named Wednesday in the media for assaulting Delsie Gayle, a 77-year-old black woman who had been assigned the siege next to him for a Barcelona-Spain flight to London's Stansted Airport on Thursday. October 19th.

In the video, we hear Mesher: "Do not talk to me in a foreign language, you're ugly f —— cow" and called Gayle a "naughty black b —– d."

He tells her, "I do not want to sit near your face," to move to another seat, and "if you do not get out of the seat, I'll push you to another seat."

He did not explain why he did not want to sit next to her.

In the television interview, Mesher said: "I've probably lost my temper a little and ordered him to get up."

Here's the video, shot by passenger David Lawrence. It contains a strong and racist language:

The original footage was viewed on YouTube nearly 1,400,000 times this past Friday.

An online petition has been launched to put pressure on Ryanair so that it compensates Gayle for his treatment. She appeared online shortly after the video became viral and has already collected some 306,000 signatures.

The petition states: "Ryanair failed to remove the man from the robbery or to support Ms. Gayle and she was forced to move seats while the man was stowed."

A number of passengers have threatened to boycott Ryanair in response to what they view as an insufficiently robust response to Mesher.

During the television interview, Mesher is excused from Gayle. Gayle and her daughter Carol rejected the apology soon after, the BBC reported on Friday.

Spanish and British police said she was investigating the incident. Officers were photographed visiting Mesher's home in Birmingham, England, but took no formal action.