Ryanair sparks outrage after failing to remove passenger from a plane after he launched a racist tirade against elderly woman sat next to him - and moved HER instead

This is the shocking moment a passenger on a Ryanair flight unleashed a torrent of racist abuse at a 77-year-old woman sitting next to him - and she was moved.

A white man and a black woman can be seen with one seat between them while other outraged passengers try to calm the situation.

The incident happened on flight FR015 from Barcelona to London Stansted on Friday afternoon.

In the dramatic footage, which has been viewed more than one million times on Facebook, the man can be heard shouting at the woman to move seats while her daughter tries to stand up to him, telling him her mother is disabled.

He replies: 'I don't care whether she's f****** disabled or not - if I tell her to get out she gets out.' 

The agitated man then jabs at the middle seat and continues yelling at the woman.

As he points he says: 'I hope somebody sits there because I don't want to sit next to you and your ugly face, your ugly f****** face.'

The woman tries to respond and a flight attendant can be seen trying to calm the situation.

But before she can say anything in response to the bully, he shouts over her and says: 'If you don't move to another seat I'll push you there.'

A man sitting in the row behind then tries to intervene, asking the man to calm down and tells him there's 'no need' for his aggressive behaviour.

The angry man then starts on the woman again and says: 'Don't talk to me in a f*****g foreign language you stupid ugly cow'

He then adds: 'I will carry on as far as I can with this ugly, black b******.'

She continued: 'I know that if I was behaving like he was or any other black person for that matter, police would have been called and we would have been kicked off the flight.'

'Mum's really feeling upset and very stressed about this situation, on top of the grief she's already experiencing. As for me, I'm upset about the whole thing too - the fact that the passenger wasn't taken off the plane and how the situation was dealt with,' she said.

The woman said that when she had complained to cabin crew they denied hearing any racial slurs and they told her to ring customer services on Monday. 

Thousands of social media users have said they are outraged at the incident and it has been shared more than 22,000 times since it was posted by David Lawrence.

One person said: 'He should have been kicked off the flight and she should have been moved to FIRST CLASS.'

Another said: 'He should have been removed from the plane. No excuses for that type of behaviour. 

'It's so sad that in today's society people still carry so much hatred inside them. When will we all realise we are all humans and all bleed the same way.'  

A number of politicians voiced their concern at the incident.

MSP for Greenock and Inverclyde Stuart McMillan posted: 'This is really appalling @Ryanair . You will know the identity of the man and the level of training given to your staff.'

Fellow MSP politician Margaret Ferrier said: 'Just watched the shocking footage on a @Ryanair aircraft, utterly disgusting. Racist male passenger should have been put off flight before it departed. 

'However well done to passenger with black t-shirt that intervened £hero.' 

A spokesperson for Ryanair said: 'We have reported this to the police in Essex and as this is now a police matter, we cannot comment further.'