If you have a Twitter account, you probably noticed some controversy on Monday.
While companies who have Twitter accounts are usually eager to respond to customers who complain via Twitter, American Airways took an, um, interesting approach to dealing with an unsatisfied customer on April 14th.
At first, the tweets from customer to company seemed appropriate:
But after twitter user @ElleRafter replied to U.S Airways a second time, things became a little more interesting. US Airways publicly tweeted back an extremely graphic image that was visible for over an hour.
The image, which is too inappropriate for Her Campus to publish, features a pornographic image featuring an airplane using the same colors as a typical US Airways plane.
US Airway quickly deleted the profane tweet and apologized for it soon after it was posted. But the image had gone viral immediately after it was posted, already causing retweets and attention from a lot of online media. Articles on Buzfeed, The Washington Post, New York Daily News, and Mashable, amongst many others.
According to USA Today, as of April 15th, 2014, “‘After it inadvertently retweeted a pornographic photo Monday, US Airways is reviewing its social media policy,’ said Matt Miller, spokesman for American Airlines, ‘which is merging with US Airways.’”
Allegedly, the person who sent out the tweet was not fired from the company, as the spokesperson said they made “an honest mistake”, stated the Washington Post. The tweet was supposedly an accident, as the picture was tweeted to the company and instead of reporting the picture, it was accidentally tweeted instead.
The media is divided in this case, many believe that the tweet was on purpose, others think it was an accident. It may seem extremely irresponsible for a major company with over 428 thousand followers, would put their income and customers at risk by tweeting something that would easily offend a lot of people. What do you think? Let us know in the comments below.