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European airline Ryanair is facing criticism after the flight crew on a plane bound for London failed to remove a man who was yelling racist remarks at another passenger.
The Friday incident on a plane taking off from Barcelona was caught on video by a passenger, David Lawrence. “RACIST MAN REFUSES TO SIT NEXT TO ELDERLY BLACK WOMAN on Ryanair flight calling victim an UGLY BLACK BASTARD and Ryanair – DOES NOTHING!!!” Lawrence wrote on Facebook.
A flood of commenters on the video, which has been viewed nearly 5 million times since it was posted Friday, expressed outrage that the man was not kicked off the flight, and some called for Ryanair boycotts.
In the video, an older white man sitting in a window seat declares, “I need to get in but I can’t get in while she’s standing there.”
To his left sits a black woman. One empty seat is between them. Another passenger defends the woman in the aisle seat, telling the man, “This is an elderly woman.”
A flight attendant intervenes, asking the older woman if she’d like to move to another seat, at which point the man responds, “I’ll tell you what, if you don’t go to another seat, I’ll push you to another seat.”
The woman in the aisle seat says something to the man, and he responds, “Don’t talk to me in a … foreign language you stupid ugly cow.” When a man behind them tries to intervene, the man tells him, “I will carry on as loud as I can with this ugly black bastard.”
The incident appears to conclude when the elderly woman, who asked to sit next to her daughter, is moved to another seat.
When a flight attendant approaches the man, he says, “I’m alright now that she’s gone.” He then remains on the flight.
“We have reported this to the police in Essex and as this is now a police matter, we cannot comment further,” a spokeswoman for the Ireland-based airline said in an email to NBC News Monday.
Essex Police in the U.K. said the department is investigating the incident and they take “prejudice-based crime seriously and we want all incidents to be reported.”