US Airways has apologized several times for sending out a tweet that included a pornographic picture of a woman engaged in a sexual act with a Boeing 777 model — a very embarrassing response to a female customer who complained about a delayed flight.
A customer named Alex first tweeted on Monday her displeasure that her flight to Portland had been put on hold, The Daily Mail reported. In her tweet to the company, she demanded “free stuff” to compensate for her trouble.
The airline replied in a tweet of its own, The Daily Mail reported: “We don’t like to hear this, Alex. Please provide feedback to our customer relations teams here,” and directed her to open an accompanying attached photograph that turned out to be a naked woman.
But the company tweet wasn’t confined to just Alex’s Twitter feed — it was actually sent out to 418,000 Twitter users who follow US Airways, The Daily Mail said.
US Airways apologized, but couldn’t explain the attachment.
“We apologize for an inappropriate image recently shared as a link in one of our responses,” the company said. “We’ve removed the tweet and are investigating.”
Later, the aviation blog at Dallas News reported that parent American Airlines Group issued the following statement:
“We apologize for the inappropriate image we recently shared in a Twitter response. Our investigation has determined that the image was initially posted to our Twitter feed by another user. We captured the tweet to flag it as inappropriate. Unfortunately the image was inadvertently included in a response to a customer. We immediately realized the error and removed our tweet. We deeply regret the mistake and we are currently reviewing our processes to prevent such errors in the future.”
• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
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