Delta and Coca-Cola both said sorry because of the latest marketing campaign run by them. This campaign encouraged the passengers to flirt and slip their numbers to their crushes on the planes. This idea was a creepy one and it attracted strong reactions on the internet from many people.
On Delta flights, passengers received napkins which had a message saying that the plane is full of interesting people and they never know. This campaign encouraged the people to write their numbers and pass it to people on the plane that they liked or had a crush on, inside the plane.
Delta in a statement said that they regularly rotated Coke products; it being a part of their brand partnership. But, they missed this napkin and they were sorry about it. They immediately started removing them from the aircraft. The Coca-Cola Company also apologized saying they were sorry to those who felt offended by this act and immediately replaced the napkins with other designs.
Some passengers felt that the napkins were unintentionally creepy and no one will appreciate this practice of passing the phone numbers to passengers who had a crush on them on the plane. One person said that these napkins were actually encouraging affairs on the plane. It may not be harmful, but that is not even decent. Another passenger got a napkin that had a message saying, “flirt with other passengers, what have you got to lose?” People posted on social media saying they never want to even look at other pax on international flights. Some passengers said that this was an attempt from Delta and Coca-Cola to encourage some creepy and old-fashioned flirting.
This airline industry was having a decade-long issue about sexual harassment and sexism on the flights. it is becoming a bit evident now. A few passengers were really angry about it and said that encouragement of unwanted advances from unknown people on the plane was harassment in a way. In 2017, a survey was carried out for more than 3,500 attendants on the flight from 29 US airlines and shockingly, 68% of the flight attendants had faced some kind of sexual harassment.
