US Airways answered a customer complaint with a porn image — it stayed up an hour

On 14 April 2014 a Twitter user sent a pornographic image — a naked woman with a model aeroplane — to @USAirways. The airline's social-care team captured the tweet in order to flag it as inappropriate. Then, handling a complaint from another customer about her flight, an agent inadvertently included the same image in the airline's reply. The post stayed up for nearly an hour before it was removed.

The airline had 422,000 followers; the reply was retweeted around the world within minutes and spawned dozens of spin-off jokes. US Airways apologised: 'Unfortunately the image was inadvertently included in a response to a customer. We immediately realised the error and removed our tweet. We deeply regret the mistake and we are currently reviewing our processes to prevent such errors in the future.' The airline was mid-merger with American Airlines, which handled the response.

The incident became the cautionary tale for social-care operations: the agent's tool held the offending image precisely because the team was trying to suppress it, and one paste error turned the moderation workflow into the brand's worst post.