Virgin Atlantic has sacked the thirteen staff who labelled customers "chavs" and criticised the maintenance record of the airline's fleet of Boeing 747s which fly from Gatwick.

The staff criticised the cleanliness of Virgin's fleet and of its passengers.

It seems staff at Gatwick spend most of their time on Facebook - BA staff are also in trouble this morning for using the public forum to slag off customers.

A Facebook group of BA Gatwick ground staff showed they were less than impressed with the opening of terminal 5 at Heathrow and with many of their passengers.

One post described passengers as "smelly and annoying" although the biggest complaint was passengers who put their boarding cards in their mouths before handing them over to staff, the Mirror reports.

But the airline, so far, seems to have taken a less hysterical route in response.

A spokesman for BA told The Register: "We are talking to the individuals concerned about their disappointing and unwise comments which are totally unrepresentative of our staff at Gatwick."

Our favourite Facebook victim remains the apparent email exchange between an Aussie call centre worker and his boss. ®

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