People are threatening to boycott Ryanair after the airline failed to remove a white man who shouted racist insults at an elderly black woman on one of its flights

David Lawrence/Facebook

• Ryanair is getting slammed for failing to remove a white man who hurled racist insults at an elderly black woman on board one of its flights.
• Video capturing the October 19th incident has gone viral with members of the public chastising the lack of reaction on the part of the airline.
• "We are aware of this video and have reported this matter to Essex Police," Ryanair said in a statement.

Irish ultra-low-cost airline Ryanair is under fire after its crew failed to remove a white man who hurled racist insults at an elderly black woman while boarding one of its flights from Barcelona, Spain to London. 

The incident, which took place on October 19, was captured on video by a fellow passenger David Lawrence and has now gone viral with more than five million views on Facebook and another 600,000 on YouTube. 

It's unclear what, if anything, triggered the tirade. However, the video shows the man seated in a window seat of the Boeing 737 hurling a series of vile racist and sexist insults toward the woman in the aisle seat.

According to the caption posted with the video, Lawrence claims the incident was a result of the man not wanting to sit next to the woman. 

The woman was eventually moved to another seat by a Ryanair crew member while the man was allowed to remain in his seat. 

Ryanair has remained quiet during the whole incident, only releasing a short one-sentence statement, "We are aware of this video and have reported this matter to Essex Police."

The reaction to the tirade on social media was swift and overwhelmingly critical of Ryanair, even spawning the hashtags RyanairRacism and BoycottRyanair.  

Other have also pledged to boycott the airline.