Airline looks into alleged 'racist' incident

British airline Virgin Atlantic said it was investigating a reported incident on a recent flight from London to Shanghai in which a Chinese woman said she was abused by a fellow passenger in racist and vitriolic language and then ignored by a flight attendant.

The report of the incident went viral on Chinese social media. By Friday, about 16 million users had followed the issue on Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter.

As of 7 pm on Friday, Virgin Atlantic's Facebook account was filled with comments from Chinese users demanding an apology.