Virgin Atlantic sacked 13 cabin crew staff for criticising passengers on Facebook

Sat, Nov 01, 2008

Reuters

LONDON -VIRGIN Atlantic sacked 13 cabin crew staff on Friday after they criticised some of the British airline's passengers on the social networking website Facebook.

The airline opened an investigation on Oct 23 following complaints from passengers and other Virgin staff members over the cabin crew's Facebook discussion.

'It was found that all 13 staff participated in a discussion on the networking site Facebook, which brought the company into disrepute and insulted some of our passengers,' Virgin Atlantic's director of communications Paul Charles told Reuters.

'There's a time and a place for Facebook. But there's no justification for it to be used as a sounding board for staff of any company to criticise the very passengers who ultimately pay their salaries.'

Mr Charles added the web discussion had now been removed from Facebook, though he was unable to say whether that had been done by the social networking site or a cabin crew member.

Virgin Atlantic, 49 per cent owned by Singapore Airlines, is controlled by entrepreneur Richard Branson's Virgin Group.

The airline specialises in long-haul flights to North America, the Caribbean, Africa and Asia.

Teenage jailed for Cyber-bullying

Worcester News 21 Nov 2009

A TEENAGER who became the first person in Britain to be sent to prison for being a Facebook bully has spoken of her remorse. Keeley Houghton, aged 18, who was jailed for six weeks after posting a threatening message on the social networking website Facebook.

Keeley Houghton was locked up after she posted a threatening message on the social networking site. She was described as “warped”, “nasty” and a “coward” by district judge Bruce Morgan for writing that she was going to “kill” victim Emily Moore on her profile status following a row in a pub.

But, speaking to your Worcester News yesterday, the 18-year-old insisted she was not a bully.

Miss Houghton, who had not got on with Miss Moore since the age of 14, admitted what she wrote had been “terrible”.

“I do feel bad for writing that,” she said. “I would have been very upset if I had seen a comment like that about me and it was terrible, but we have never got on.

“I understand how she felt about the comment and that it wasn’t particularly nice.”

Miss Houghton spent six weeks of her three-month sentence – imposed at Worcester Magistrates court in August – at the Eastwood Park prison in Gloucestershire, and was released last month.

Full story on Worcester News.