Not happy with their recent spate of public embarrassments, Qantas poured some more petrol on the PR fire to really get things going when they launched their recent Twitter campaign.

Less than a month ago Qantas Airlines was forced to ground its entire fleet following labour disputes, an act which left countless fliers unhappy and, more importantly, stranded. Before that, they made headlines when they added softcore porn to their in-flight entertainment roster. One would think the Australian airline had had enough and would sit out a couple of rounds. One would be wrong.

Earlier this week Qantas launched a Twitter campaign which asked customers to tweet their “dream luxury in-flight experience,” a move akin to walking into a hungry lion’s den with several open wounds. In the same way that a lion’s response to that particular situation would not be pretty,the tweets were brutal:

Twitter user “ChanArmstrong” said Qantas luxury was “more than 3mins notice that the whole airline is on strike,” while another user, describing themselves as “thesuspecto,” said their answer was, “chose Singapore Air luxury instead.

Daniel Angus, using the Twitter name “antmandan,” said Qantas luxury meant “being stranded on the other side of the world without warning when you just want to get home to your 10-month-old daughter.

With nothing else to do but face the music, Qantas replied to the tweets with their own, “at this rate our #QantasLuxury competition is going to take years to judge.”

The campaign is a resounding failure which some PR experts have called, “Australia’s greatest public relations failure” and a “classic example of the dangers of unpredictable social media.”

Thanks Qantas, for showing everyone else exactly how not to do PR.

[Source: Reuters]