US Airways created a social media firestorm on Monday when it posted a pornographic photo on its official Twitter account, according to Syracuse.com.
“We welcome feedback, Elle. If your travel is complete, you can detail it here for review and follow-up,” the company tweeted in response to a customer who complained about being delayed an hour in her travels.
Instead of tweeting a link to contact customer service, the airline tweeted a picture of a nude woman who was posing with a toy airplane between her legs.
“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 company later tweeted.
The apology came too late. The image went viral and the company name was trending on Twitter almost immediately.
Bad jokes about the mistake were flooding Twitter on Monday:
“CNN spent one month straight speculating about the plane, but they never once thought to look there,” @AG_Conservative wrote.
“Some people are saying @USAirways was hacked but it looks like an inside job,”@HeyVeronica tweeted.
“Maybe that US Airways photo was their new ad for more leg room?”@MarcMalkin tweeted.
The company told The Washington Post: “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.”
BuzzFeed said that the image was from a German porn site. A user of Twitter copied the image and put it in a tweet to the airline. Then, an employee accidentally copied the link to the photo and put it in the tweet to the customer.
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