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Low-cost carrier Ryanair has issued a statement to clarify its response to an incident in which a woman was racially abused on one of its flights, and accused the daughter of the victim of making an “untrue” claim about whether the airline made an apology.
Ryanair also implied its cabin crew had not understood the seriousness of the incident at the time, which happened while passengers were boarding a flight from Barcelona to Stansted last Friday.
In a statement, Ryanair said it “immediately wrote . . . to the female passenger at 11am on Sunday morning, apologising sincerely for what happened on board the aircraft . . . We also invited the passenger to contact the airline if they wished to discuss the matter further. The claim made in the media in recent days, that Ryanair did not contact or apologise to the female passenger, is untrue.”
Carol Gayle, daughter of victim Delsie Gayle, said in the days after the incident: “Nobody has apologised. We’ve not had nothing. We just want an open apology from Ryanair.”
However, on Friday Ryanair made public copies of a letter and an email that it said had been sent on Sunday morning from the airline’s customer disruptions manager to Ms Gayle: “On behalf of Ryanair, may I sincerely apologise for what happened on board our aircraft,” the letter said.
Ryanair also said it only became aware of a video of the incident — in which a man identified as David Mesher called Mrs Gayle “an ugly black bastard” — late on Saturday, October 20, “when it gained widespread coverage on social media.” The airline said it reported the incident to the police at 9am the next morning.
It implied its cabin crew had not understood the seriousness of the incident at the time: “While these events were videoed by another passenger on a mobile phone, this video was not shown to cabin crew until after landing in London Stansted.”
Mr Mesher spoke to media on Friday morning, saying he was “not a racist person by any means” and apologising for Mrs Gayle’s distress. He claimed it was “just a fit of temper at the time”.
The airline said: “Ryanair’s Spanish cabin crew were aware of an argument between these two passengers during the boarding process, but were not aware of, as they were not present when, racist comments that were made by the male passenger towards the female passenger.”
Robin Kiely, head of communications at Ryanair, said the airline had “treated [the incident] with the urgency and seriousness it warranted”.
“We trust that this statement will address the inaccurate media coverage of this incident over recent days, and that the legal rights of both passengers will be respected, while the police services in Essex and Barcelona conduct their investigation of this matter, with Ryanair’s full co-operation and assistance.”
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