Apologetic Ryanair flyer denies racism

LONDON — A white British man who was filmed shouting racist abuse at a black woman in a Ryanair plane in Spain apologized in a TV interview Friday and said that he had lost his temper, a bit, and that he was “not a racist person by any means.”

Delsie Gayle, 77, the target of the abuse, who was eventually moved to another seat by Ryanair, rejected the explanation from David Mesher, saying on the same TV show, “You must forget and forgive, but it’s going to take a long time for me to get over what he has done to me.”

The separate interviews on the British broadcaster ITV came as Ryanair addressed the controversy for the first time Friday, issuing a statement that rejected claims that the company had ignored the clash aboard a flight to London from Barcelona.

Ryanair has come under fire for the response of its cabin crew — which asked Gayle to move to another seat nearby, where her daughter was sitting — and for its silence about the encounter in the days that followed.

Members of the cabin crew “believed they were dealing with an argument between two passengers,” the statement said. “They followed company procedure, to defuse the argument and separate the passengers by offering to move one to alternative seating.”

The episode on Oct. 19 began when Mesher asked Gayle, who is said to have arthritis, to stand up and let him through to the window seat. Apparently she did not move fast enough for his liking.

Video filmed by another passenger and widely shared on social media showed Mesher, who the British news media says is in his 70s, hurling abuse at Gayle as she sat beside him. Mesher called her a “stupid, ugly cow” and an “ugly black bastard.” The footage has been viewed millions of times online.

Mesher said in the interview on ITV’s “Good Morning Britain” program, “I’m not a racist person by any means, and it’s just a fit of temper at the time, I think.”

“I apologize for all the distress you’ve had there and since,” he added.

Gayle, a retired care worker in Britain who appeared separately on the same show, said she could not accept Mesher’s apology. She added that she had been so upset by the incident that she could no longer sleep or eat properly.

“I was so depressed,” she said. “I was just shaking, and all I’ve been doing is just crying, been crying, crying, crying.”