Nearly 200,000 sign petition calling for Ryanair to compensate passenger who suffered racial abuse
A petition calling on Ryanair to publicly apologise and compensate a woman who was racially abused by another passenger on a London flight achieved over 230,000 of its targetted 300,000 signatures in a little over 24 hours.
The petition, by race equality campaigner Irta Holbourne, says Ryanair should also provide assurance that crew will protect their passengers better, with a review of policies or training.
It comes after a video emerged of an incident on a flight from Barcelona to London Stansted on Friday when a male passenger insulted Delsie Gayle, a black woman who is severely disabled.
Ryanair has come under fire for the inaction of its cabin crew and its late response.
According to the woman’s daughter, who was also on the flight, cabin crew claimed they hadn’t heard the racist insults and told her to contact customer services on Monday.
Since the video went viral, Ryanair has referred the matter to Essex police and said it could not comment further.
But the petition said action should have been taken earlier.
"They (the family) have been treated like second class citizens – nobody from the airline has contacted them since~the incident. Mrs Gayle reported that she is unable to sleep or eat, will never get over this incident and is experiencing depression," says the petition.
"In 1955 Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white man leading to the Montgomery bus boycott. 63 years later Ryanair standby whilst a white man demands no black person sits next to them. This is disgraceful – please sign and share."
Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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