Egg on its face and an investigation almost guaranteed to give the comms people at British Airways a sleepless night after its Twitter account had a meltdown.
Earlier on Saturday evening (UK time), the official Twitter account of the airline retweeted a message containing four expletives and a derogatory term.
The original message was criticising the airline after an apparent cancellation, but this was then retweeted, with a comment added, by a currently protected account (@GordonQiu9).
For some reason BA then retweeted the second message, which included the additional comment, to its 210,000 followers.
All hell then broke lose, with many followers wondering what on earth the carrier was playing at.
Within an hour the BA account had issued the following apology:
BA confirmed this evening via email that an investigation had been launched. No further details about the incident were shared.
It is understood the message was retweeted outside of the normal hours when the airline monitors and accesses the account.