Racist human insults do not engage the airline

By Amy B Wang

David Lawrence had just set up at the 22F headquarters of a Ryanair flight Thursday, when he heard a rumor that was being prepared on the other side of the plane.

A few rows behind him, a man with a red face, gray hair and dark-rimmed glasses, was shouting at a black woman sitting in the alley.

"I heard this man shout at this woman saying," You're on my way, get out! I do not want you to be next to me! Lawrence told the Washington Post in a telephone interview on Sunday. "I could not believe what I had heard."

Lawrence grabbed his phone and started recording the meeting that had taken place before a London-Stansted airport-Barcelona flight. At that time, the woman's daughter had approached and confronted the man.

"She said, who are you talking to? Do not shout at her, she's my mother, she's disabled, "recalls Lawrence, pointing out that the elderly woman was on the wheelchair. "He said then," I m " "

In the video, we hear the man yelling at the young black woman while the other passengers continue to hurtle down the alley. A male flight attendant on Lawrence's camera apparently tries to calm the situation, with little effect.

"I tell you that I hope someone will be sitting there," the man said to the elderly woman pointing to the empty middle seat between them. "" Because I do not want to sit next to your – … "The rest of the sentence is not clear, although it seems to call it" sickly " , "Big" and "ugly."

The flight attendant then asks the woman if she wants to sit elsewhere.

"Put it on another seat!" Shouts the passenger before turning to the woman. "I tell you that. If you do not go to another seat, I'll put you to another seat! "

The old woman says something in return, prompting her to angrily reply: "Do not speak to me in a foreign language, my stupid ugly cow!", Then "ugly black bastard!"

The screams had a mixed effect on the surrounding passengers. A man, dressed in a black t-shirt and sitting in the row just behind, physically tried to intervene, putting his hand between the seats in front of him and asking the angry passenger to lower his voice .

"Stop," pleads the man to the black shirt. "It's not necessary at all. Stopped. It's very easy to shut your mouth. "

Lawrence can be heard while recording the video, saying, "Throw it out of the flight. Throw it out of the flight. Get rid of him!"

Finally, the older woman asks to sit next to her daughter and starts to step out of the row, visibly tired.

To his surprise, Lawrence said, the flight took off soon after, with no apparent repercussions on the passenger, who actually enjoyed "extra legroom".

"I thought the air hostess was going to call someone and escort the man from the flight," Lawrence told The Post. "They moved the woman instead of doing it. It was shocking for me. "

He decided to upload his video on Facebook the next day, frustrated.

"It was so disturbing," Lawrence said. "Since there was no response from other passengers of the flight at that time, I told myself, okay, someone needs to know what happened." right here. That's why I kept the video running and captured as much as I could. "

Over the weekend, the video garnered nearly 3 million views and was shared tens of thousands of times. Lawrence then uploaded the video to YouTube, where she was seen more than 100,000 times.

Many commentators have expressed outrage over how the case has been handled and asked why the Ryanair flight crew had not removed the passenger before taking off from the airport. ;plane.

Ryanair representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comments on Sunday. However, the low-cost airline based in Dublin said in an article published on Twitter Sunday that she was aware of the video and that she had reported the incident to the police. ; Essex.

"We are applying strict guidelines to disruptive passengers and we will not tolerate such unruly behavior," Ryanair told BBC News. "We will go further in this case and disruptive or abusive behavior will result in the ban on traveling passengers. "

The Essex police confirmed to BuzzFeed News that she was investigating the case and encouraged people holding information to contact them.

"The Essex police are serious about crimes based on prejudice and we want all incidents to be reported," the police department told the news site. "We are working closely with Ryanair and the Spanish authorities in the investigation. "

The unnamed woman's daughter told HuffPost UK that her mother, identified only as "Mrs. Gayle", is a 77-year-old pensioner who immigrated from Jamaica to Britain in the 1960s. to mark the anniversary of the death of Gayle's husband, added the girl.

"She felt really depressed and I thought the trip would cheer her up," Gayle's 53-year-old daughter told the news site. "The underlying reason for this man's abusive behavior is that my mother is a black woman and he does not want her sitting next to him. He says it in the video. "

Gayle's daughter said that this meeting had moved her and that her mother was "pissed off and very stressed, in addition to the grief she was already experiencing. "

Lawrence, 56, told The Post that he had spoken with the mother and daughter after the flight and said that they were both disappointed and disgusted. His parents were also part of the "Windrush generation", immigrants who emigrated from the Caribbean to Britain from 1948 to 1971. Lawrence therefore said that he could understand why the older woman had agreed to change seats instead than to make the situation worse.