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US Airways apologises after tweeting obscene image to irate customer

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By John Glenday | Reporter

April 15, 2014 | 2 min read

US Airways has been forced to apologise after sending an image of a woman engaged in a sex act with a toy plane to a customer who complained their flight was late.The furore kicked off when Twitter user Alex (@Thatkatzkat) took to the micro-blogging platform to complain after her flight was delayed, tweeting: “You ruined my Spring break, I want some free stuff @US Airways H8 YOU,” to the airline.In an unconventional response however the airlines social media team responded: “'We don’t like to hear this, Alex. Please provide feedback to our Customer Relations team here,” before linking to the graphic image.The explicit picture was distributed to all 418,000 of the airlines followers for a full 22 minutes before being taken down, stoking a social media firestorm in the process.Amongst those to comment were those who empathised with the unfortunate Twitter manager whilst others couldn’t help but laugh.

Issuing a more measured statement later US Airways said: “We apologize for an inappropriate image recently shared as a link in one of our responses. We’ve removed the tweet and are investigating.”It is thought the tweet may have been an in-house joke which was inadvertently made public.

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