Virgin Atlantic has sacked 13 cabin crew staff after they criticised some of the airline's passengers on Facebook.

The messages on the social networking site related to planes flying from Gatwick and described the passengers as "chavs".

They also alleged an aircraft was full of cockroaches and that the airline's jet engines were replaced four times in one year.

A representative for Virgin Atlantic said: "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.

"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."

He added that 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.

Meanwhile British Airways ground staff at London Gatwick are under investigation after they created a Facebook page on which they described the airline's £4.3bn Terminal 5 at Heathrow as a “disaster”.

They used the page to criticise passengers who put boarding passes in their mouths before handing them to staff at the departure gate and said they had little time for celebrity passengers and people with "stupid American accents".

A British Airways spokesman said: “We will be talking to the individuals concerned about their disappointing and unwise comments, which are totally unrepresentative of the vast number of hard-working ground staff we employ at Gatwick.”