US Airways explains risky tweet

By TAYLOR HOFF

Monday afternoon during a flight delay, a passenger on US Airways flight 1787, announced her dismay with the airline through a tweet to the airline’s official Twitter account.

The response she received was nothing short of pornographic and offensive.

After sending several tweets to the airline’s Twitter account, she finally elicited a response. They stated “We truly dislike delays too and are very sorry your flight was affected.”

The unsatisfied flier continued on to tweet a rude response addressing the fact that they have ignored her previous tweets. The airline seemed to be trying to make up for its mistakes in its next tweet to her, but something went terribly wrong.

In the seemingly appropriate and warranted tweet they mention, “We welcome feedback, Elle. If your travel is complete, you can detail it here for review and followup.”

The imaged that followed was certainly not the customer satisfaction survey that they meant to attention.

Instead the tweet was followed by a pornographic picture featuring a woman and a plastic airplane.

The inappropriate tweet stayed online for several minutes, before the airline realized its serious error.

Officials from US Air quickly tweeted; “We apologize for an inappropriate image recently shared as a link in one of our responses, We’ve removed the tweet and are investigating.”

The tweets, however, had already gone viral. Several websites featured the airline’s inappropriate tweet and poked fun at the obvious misfortune of the event.

The airline finally came forward announcing that the tweet came not from a hacking, but by honest mistake. The inappropriate picture had been used in a tweet tagging the airline, one which it had flagged as inappropriate, so that it could later be deleted. Because of this, the image was placed in the “clipboard” and accidentally “pasted” into what should have been an honest and innocent tweet.

The airline publicly apologized and claimed it is making internal changes to its communication process to ensure that this never happens again.