Oops! British Airways has apologized for an advert in which Londoners were urged to “Escape the commute and discover the Indian Ocean.”
The BA advert was decidedly ill-timed as the search for the the missing Malaysian Airlines plane continues.
The video advertisements caught London train commuters by surprise on Thursday, March 27, 2014 as a sea of blue was shown on screens at the Euston station along with the phrase: “Escape the commute and discover the Indian Ocean.”
In an email to ABC News, a British Airways spokeswoman said, “We are very sorry for any offense caused. The advertising campaign featured in the U.K. is being withdrawn. This campaign was planned some months ago and we recognize that its appearance at this time is inappropriate.”
Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, bound for Beijing, vanished on March 8 somewhere over the Indian Ocean, carrying 239 passengers.
“I just thought it was a really strange time to have the ad running,” Reddit user Alan Milford, who photographed the ad, tells the New York Daily News. But he works in advertising himself, and says he “understands these things are planned weeks or months in advance, so it’s not BA’s fault.”
