British Airways apologises after re-tweeting racial abuse against customer

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British Airways has launched an investigation after an offensive and racist message was apparently re-tweeted from its official Twitter account.

The BA Twitter account, which has 210,000 followers, reposted the message which included extremely profane language and a racist term against Asian people, yesterday.

After the offensive message was deleted, staff at the airline then tweeted an apology. It said: "Apologies for the last RT. We are sorry for an y offence caused and are investigating how this may have happened," the Daily Mail reported today.

The incident started when a profane message was posted by a disgruntled Twitter user named Jae Jang Ladd. Another user of the social networking site tweeting under the name Asian Ronaldo, replied, again using profane language, asking Jae Jang Ladd asking him to go back to his country.

This message was then re-tweeted by the official BA Twitter account.

Within minutes, hundreds of Twitters users resent the re-tweet and later more than 160 followers had re-tweeted the apology.

BA spokesman Helena Flynn said the team were thoroughly investigating how the incident had occurred. She said it had not been ruled out that the account may have been hacked.

Flynn said: 'We don't know yet how this has evolved. "We'd just like to apologise to all of the poor people who have been involved in this and apologise for any offence caused."

She said that police had not been in touch over the post and as yet there had been no official complaints. BA said the Twitter account was managed by its large marketing team.