Virgin Atlantic is putting in place damage control after a March 1 incident aboard a Shanghai-bound plane became viral on Chinese media.
According to a recent post of Weibo, a male Caucasian passenger insulted Liu Wei, a female Chinese passenger. Howeveer, the aggrieved passenger was allegedly ignored by an attendant of the airline while aboard Virgin flight VS250 from London, reported China Daily.
According to Metro, the white man randomly shouted at her “You [f**king Chinese pig! Get the f**k out of here!” To worsen the matter, a flight attendant told Liu off and even threatened to throw her off the plane. Other passengers came to Liu’s defense and a cabin crew agreed to move the man, apparently suffering from a mental disorder, to another seat far away. But Liu said the man remained on the same seat for the duration of the 11-hour tense air travel.
No less than Sir Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Atlantic, tweeted an apology in Mandarin and English not only to the woman but the rest of the passenger. He wrote, “Really sorry to hear about an alleged incident on flight V250. We do not tolerate abuse and Virgin Atlantic are investigating.”
Besides Branson, Carly O’Donnell, international communications manager for Virgin Atlantic, confirmed that based on their investigation, there was an altercation between two passengers on VS250, with the two both becoming distressed and upset. She added that the flight’s cabin crew tried their best to resolve the situation for both customers. O’Donnell stressed Virgin Atlantic’s zero tolerance approach to racism.
As of Friday, almost 25 million Weibo users have read the complaint which had gone viral on Chinese social media.