BA racist retweet causes controversy
2012-11-19 16:08
A racist and abusive comment was accidentally posted on British Ariways' official Twitter page, highlighting the risks involved in using the social networking site, Travelmole reports.
The foul-mouthed tweet, originally from another user of the site, was re-tweeted by BA to its 210,383 followers before communications chiefs spotted the error. According to Mirror News a post appeared on the timeline of the BA-verified account in which an angry customer was called a "g**k" and told to "f*** off back to your own country" by another user.
The abusive comment was made by a user called 'Asian Ronaldo' who was responding to a tweet from a user called 'JaeLadd' complaining about his flight being cancelled. The offensive remark was then re-tweeted by @British_Airways to its followers.
BA immediately issued an apology, but not before hundreds of followers had also re-tweeted the comment to their followers.
BA said: "We apologise for any offence caused and we are investigating how this has happened."
A spokesperson for the airline said it wasn't clear if it was the result of the airline using an auto-retweet function or if BA's account had been hacked. BA staff attempted to distract attention by reposting a video of their latest ad campaign.
The tweet has since been removed and seemingly, so has Asian Ronaldo's Twitter profile.
