BLACK Activists Rising Against Cuts (Barac) co-founder Zita Holbourne’s initiative in launching a petition urging Ryanair to apologise to Delsie Gayle for racist abuse suffered on a Barcelona-to-Stansted flight should be strongly supported.

Ryanair has a responsibility to all passengers and can request police to board a plane to remove unruly, drunk or abusive passengers.

Its staff failed to protect a 77-year-old disabled woman from the coarsest of racist abuse by a male passenger whose whose misconduct was videoed and uploaded to the internet.

The airline has no right to draw a line under this episode and leave it to the police to deal with.

The company says it can’t comment further because “this is now a police matter,” which is nonsense.

No-one has been charged, it is not sub judice, so Ryanair has a duty to apologise to Delsie Gayle and compensate her for allowing her to suffer a degrading verbal assault.

It failed in its duty of care, making the victim of this vile attack change her seat rather than jettison the perpetrator.

Ryanair must also come clean on its training programme and instructions to flight staff on how to react in the event of such onboard outrages so the public can judge how seriously it takes racist abuse.

Senior management cannot be allowed to hide from view in the hope that this scandal will go away, that the victim will be forgotten and abusive racists can feel confident of getting away in future with similar disgusting behaviour.