‘Appalled’: Despicable message scrawled on Qantas in-flight magazine

A disturbing message has been spotted scrawled on the front cover of a Qantas in-flight magazine. Here’s how flight attendants reacted to the racist act.

An Olympian and former Indigenous senator has called out a racist handwritten message scrawled on an in-flight magazine after it was spotted on her husband’s Qantas flight.

Gold medallist and former Labor senator, Nova Peris, shared a photo of the defaced magazine on social media after an elderly woman sitting next to her husband, Scott Appleton, noticed it on-board a Darwin-Alice Springs flight on Tuesday.

“Here’s to hoping Qantas tell their cleaning contractors to remove #Qantas books from planes with racist messages written on them,” Ms Perris wrote on social media alongside the photo.

News.com.au will not republish the message here.

The racist message, blurred here, was found scribbled on an in-flight magazine. Picture: Facebook/Nova Peris

Mr Appleton handed the magazine to a flight attended before it was immediately removed by crew.

He told the National Indigenous Times flight attendants were shocked when they saw the racist comments and applauded them for handling “the situation very well”.

“(They) were extremely sensitive in the way it was handled,” he told the publication.

Mr Appleton believed the aircraft had arrived at Alice Springs from Adelaide, before it travelled to Darwin on Tuesday.

In a statement to news.com.au, a Qantas spokesperson said they “were appalled that someone would make these racist remarks”.

“We are committed to supporting our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and are proud that our crew acknowledge country for every flight landing in Australia.”

Qantas cleaners and crew are said to replenish the magazines on flights regularly.

Qantas said they were “appalled” by the racist remarks. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Ben Clark

The incident comes after a mum spotted a fellow passenger’s racist text message about her son while on-board a Qantas flight last year.

While in the air, the mother was shocked to catch a glimpse of the man’s phone screen, which displayed a message that referred to her as a “lovely fat Islander woman with her black kid” kicking his seat.

“I feel as though the whole interaction had nothing to do with my son ‘kicking’ his chair but merely something to do with how we looked, with his racial comments or simply because I had a child who was sitting right behind him,” the mum wrote on Facebook at the time.

She said the man appeared “shocked” when she confronted him and immediately started to delete the racist text.

The man in the seat in front was spotted sending a racist message. Picture: Facebook

After a flight attendant became concerned, the woman and her son moved to the back of the plane, switching seats with another man and his teenage son.

The man who sent the offensive text message later apologised to a cabin crew member.

“Should a customer feel uncomfortable during their journey, they should raise it with a member of our crew who are trained on how to manage various situations, as they did on this occasion,” Qantas said in a statement at the time.