Oops! British Airways (BA) faulted on Saturday when it tweeted an “F-word,” with a tinge of racism, to its more than 210,000 followers.
The F-bomb was dropped in response to Twitter user @JaeLadd sending the airline a message stating his dissatisfaction with the supposed cancellation of his flight.
“@British_Airways F**k you. F****n cancelling my flight!” he said, adding the typical hash tag “#bunchofc**ts” for emphasis.
An account, now defunct, which indicated @JaeLadd as “friend,” reposted the original message with additional commentary.
“[Go] back to your f*****g country you gook,” he responded.
It appears that BA was so pleased with the conversation that those in charge of handling its Twitter account went ahead to retweet the whole conversation. According to Sky News, some officials at the airline company now claim the account was hacked.
The airline deleted the profanity-filled tweet and posted a new note, “Apologies for the last RT,” it wrote. “We are sorry for any offence caused and are investigating how this may have happened.”
Fortunately, some Twitter users, such as @louise_s_page, managed to capture screenshot of the entire conversation.
As a result, British Airways has been gaining nearly 70 followers each hour. The airline company was recently hailed by Mashable for its social media presence.
British Airways (BA) is the flag carrier airline of the United Kingdom, the largest airline in the UK based on fleet size, international flights and international destinations and second largest, behind easyJet, measured by passengers carried.
The airline’s franchising operation late last year began its first non-European foray, signing an agreement with South Africa’s leading independent airline, Comair.
According to Flightglobal, Southern Africa is an important market for British Airways, and Comair, which serves Cape Town, Durban, Johannesburg, Richard’s Bay and Skukuza in South Africa, and Harare, Gaborone, Manzini and Windhoek in neighbouring countries, is expected to provide considerably enhanced feed into BA’s long-haul flights.
The screenshot of the tweet is available here.
