If I’d abused a white man, I would have been arrested
THE grandmother who was subjected to a torrent of racist abuse on a Ryanair flight yesterday revealed that the ordeal has left her feeling depressed.
Delsie Gayle, 77, heaped criticism on the budget airline by questioning why they failed to remove the offending passenger despite watching him repeatedly abusing her.
Mrs Gayle and her family were in a state of ‘utter shock’ last night as the Irish airline had still not contacted them, despite a public outcry over its handling of the incident.
Speaking publicly for the first time, the pensioner – part of the Windrush generation of immigrants – accused Ryanair of being inadvertently racist, claiming they would have reacted differently if a white passenger had been abused.
‘I feel really depressed about it,’ she said. ‘I go to bed and say what have I done? I haven’t done anything to attack him. Because of the colour of my skin. I was abused like that.
‘I feel very low. He pays his fare, I pay mine. So why did he abuse me for that? Because of the colour of my skin.
‘Why [is] he treating me because the colour of my skin, that’s how I look isn’t it? Because if I had done that to him I’m sure they would have called the police.’ Mrs Gayle, who came to Britain from the Caribbean in the 1960s, had been taken on holiday by her family to lift her morale ahead of the first anniversary of her husband Austin’s death.
As they prepared to fly back to London from Barcelona-El Prat Airport on Friday, they encountered a tirade of abuse from a white male passenger.
The man, who has yet to be identified, became agitated at how long Mrs Gayle, who suffers from arthritis, took to move from her aisle seat as he tried to get to his window seat.
Mrs Gayle said: ‘ He said to me, “Can you get up and let me come in?”, so I said: “In a minute.” He said: “When I say get up, I mean you ought to get up”. So I said to him, “Don’t point your hand in my face” and he said “I do what I want to do”.’
Airline staff then watched on without intervening as the abuser called Mrs Gayle a ‘black b******’ and threatened to push her off the row of seats they shared.
During an emotional interview at her home in Leyton, East London, Mrs Gayle said: ‘I know if I do it to him I know everyone on the plane would try to attack me.
‘And because I’m black, I’m sad to say that, they didn’t want to get involved with me.’
Following the abuse, she was eventually moved to another seat while the man remained in his seat, refusing to apologise.
‘I didn’t want to sit there and for him to abuse me any more,’ said Mrs Gayle, who had been seated apart from her family. ‘It made me feel really angry.’
Describing her frustration with Ryanair, she said: ‘I decided I would not fly with that airline, because they don’t treat you with respect.’
Her daughter Carol, 53, who was also on the flight to Stansted, said: ‘ He should be moved or taken off the plane and nothing was done. I know if that was a black person racially abusing an elderly woman, the police would have been involved.
‘It would have been a different matter. When I saw the video I felt like he [the abuser] was the victim, the way that Ryanair were treating it.
‘Nobody has apologised. We’ve not had nothing. We just want an open apology from Ryanair. I can’t even watch the video any more. It’s just so upsetting.’
She said Ryanair staff refused to do anything, despite the family complaining that the abuser had used racist language, and said they were in a rush to board the next plane. I called the attendant and said, “Look I told you to take him off, he’s been shouting racial abuse”,’ she said. ‘ The flight attendant said he didn’t hear any of that.
‘He didn’t hear any racial abuse. That’s what he said. The captain
‘I feel very depressed about it all’ ‘Nobody has apologised’
or pilot came on and said there’s nothing we can do now. We have got so many people that need to get on this plane.’
Both Mrs Gayle and her late husband Austin were both originally from Jamaica.
After moving to the UK in 1965, Mrs Gayle spent more than two decades working as a care assistant.
The Ryanair incident happened at the end of a three-day trip to the Costa Brava planned by Carol, one of her three daughters, to help her over the grief of losing her husband a year ago.