U.S. Airways Tweets Out Porn After Customer Complaint
By John Dodge
CHICAGO (CBS) -- On several levels, a pornographic tweet sent out by U.S. Airways may be the most amusing and embarrassing corporate social media gaffes ever.
The airlines social media customer service team was responding to a customer's tweet complaining about delays on a flight from Charlotte, N.C. to Portland.
The airline said it welcomed the feedback and presumably intended to include a link that would allow the customer, @ElleRafter on Twitter, to provide additional details about her experience beyond the 140 character Twitter limit.
Instead, the link was a picture of a naked woman using a model airplane as a sex toy. If the tweet was sent deliberately or by mistake, either way, it's extremely embarrassing.
According to various media reports the tweet remained on the site for about an hour. Whatever the time, it was plenty long enough for people to notice and tweet about it.
U.S. Airways, which operates several flights out of Chicago, apologized for the error.
"We apologize for an inappropriate image recently shared as a link in one of our responses," the airline said on Twitter. "We've removed the tweet and are investigating."
Most of the reaction on Twitter was amusing.
https://twitter.com/drew/statuses/455789457237483520
https://twitter.com/inthefade/statuses/455789429391908864
The company told The Washington Post it was simply a matter of human error.
"Our investigation has determined that the image was initially posted to our Twitter feed by another user," US Airways said in a statement. "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."
