Delta Airlines issued an apology after its World Cup tweet congratulating the U.S. team on Monday depicted Ghana with an image of a giraffe.
Delta was in hot water on the social media site after the congratulatory tweet depicted the U.S. with an image of the Statue of Liberty along with an photo of a giraffe to represent Ghana.
The tweet was slammed by critics as “narrow-minded,” stereotypical and just plain inaccurate.
Twitter users were quick to point out to Delta that there are no giraffes in Ghana.
One user even criticized the company for not taking a few seconds to research information about Ghana.
.@delta Ghana’s really more well known for their Clymene Dolphins than giraffes, but that’s just me checking Wikipedia for three seconds, one user wrote.
Another tweet poked fun at the company suggesting it would take action to correct the inaccuracy of the tweet.
“Delta currently airlifting a giraffe into Ghana,” @ashleymayer tweeted.
Another user simply shared an image of a map that showed the giraffe population across the entire continent of African.
The image confirmed that there are no giraffes in Ghana.
Awesomely Luvvie, a popular African blogger, tweeted, “This is the b**** us Africans gotta deal with. There are no giraffes in Ghana, you narrow-minded nincompoops! @Delta FAIL!”
Another tweet was filled with sarcasm as @prisonculture wrote, “Y’all so sensitive, it’s @delta, it can’t be expected to know a lot about the world. I mean it’s not like their business is world travel.”
Other tweets joked that anyone who used Delta to book a flight to Ghana might end up in Serengeti instead.
Humorous memes also appeared, thanks to the inaccurate tweet, including one with an image of a giraffe peering into an airplane’s window with the caption, “My last Delta flight.”
After all the online criticism, Delta issued an apology tweet with a typo.
“We’re sorry for our choice of photo in our precious tweet,” Delta tweeted. “Best of luck to all teams playing in the World Cup.”
Unfortunately, the typo caused even more backlash from users who were irritated with the error, and those who thought the airline was being smug.
“Are you kidding me delta? How insincere and insensitive f** your sh*** apology,” one user replied.
Delta issued a typo-free tweet less than 10 minutes later, replacing the word “precious” with “previous.”
