Yahoo Finance US Airways Apologises Over Pornographic Tweet
US Airways has been forced to issue an apology after accidentially tweeting an obscene image in response to a customer complaint.
The picture, which showed a woman posing with a model airplane, was posted as part of an apology to a customer who had complained about a delayed flight.
It remained on the airline's Twitter (NYSE: TWTR - news) feed for around an hour before it was removed, allowing enough time for the image to go viral.
In a statement the airline said an investigation had found the photo was initially posted on its Twitter feed by another user.
It said it had captured the tweet to flag it as inappropriate, but then accidently included it in a response to a customer.
The airline said: "We deeply regret the mistake and we are currently reviewing our processes to prevent such errors in the future."
In a separate statement on Twitter US Airways said: "We apologise for an inappropriate image recently shared as a link in one of our responses. We’ve removed the tweet and are investigating."
Gleeful followers have since bombarded the airline with joke responses.
One person tweeted: "US airways just fired their social media interns. All of them. Forever."
Another referred the recent discovery of the "Heartbleed" bug, which allows hackers to access private information through a flaw in a web encryption programme, saying: "Dear @USAirways, just blame it on Heartbleed. Everyone will believe you."
US Airways was not the only airline to find itself in the midst of a Twitter scandal.
A Dutch teenager was arrested on Monday after sending a tweet to American Airlines (NasdaqGS: AAL - news) , which has recently merged with US Airways, in which she posed as a member of al Qaeda.
The tweet posted by the 14-year-old girl said: "hello, my name's Ibrahim and I'm from Afghanistan. I'm part of Al Qaida and on June 1st I'm gonna do something really big bye".
American Airlines replied, saying it took such threats "very seriously" and that it had forwarded her IP address and details to the FBI.
The tweet reportedly earned the girl thousands of new followers.
Since then, other Twitter users have posted copycat threats to the airline.
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