Passenger bombarded with sexual harassment messages on Virgin Atlantic seat chat system

A legal sexual attack expert was personally harassed by strangers on a Virgin Atlantic flight.

Jessica Van Meir, from Atlanta, Georgia, was sexually harassed on the Virgin Atlantic seat chat system by two strangers sitting nine rows away from her.

Van Meir shared images of the seat chat on Twitter after her flight.

One of them said: "Welcome to hell", while the other named himself "big d*** swinger" and sent Van Meir winky face emojis.

The Cambridge University graduate replied to her harassers that she worked at a law firm specialising in online sexual harassment and that she hopes they enjoy being reported to Virgin Atlantic.

Tweeting about the ordeal Van Meir said: "I was on a Virgin Atlantic flight, and I unexpectedly received these sexually harassing messages on my screen."

"I was in 55C. The flight attendants were helpful and dealt with it swiftly. Have any other women had this happen to them?"

"Virgin Atlantic, you should probably take measures to prevent this from happening by flagging specific language and putting in place a reporting function on the chat to report abusive users," Van Meir added.

The airline has since got in contact with Van Meir apologising for the situation and said that they were "reviewing our systems to make sure this doesn't happen again".

A Virgin Atlantic spokesperson also told MailOnline that they were "extremely concerned to hear of the incident reported on board one of our flights and are investigating as a matter of urgency".

"We want all of our customers to have the best possible experience when they fly with us, and have zero tolerance for any disruptive or inappropriate behaviour.

"We're grateful to our cabin crew who supported our customer following this incident and would like to apologise for the distress caused."