Like a romantic partner who forgot what day it is, Vancouver International Airport found itself apologizing on Friday after posting a Valentine’s Day message on Twitter that encouraged air travellers to hit on their seatmates.
“You are boarding a flight,” the since-deleted tweet from the @yvrairport account began. “You get to the next row and notice your seatmate is [very attractive]. How do you spark up a flirty conversation with them?”
The best answer was to win tickets to the Vancouver Aquarium for a date night, but the tweet might as well have hit a flock of geese on takeoff, because it was turned back immediately.
Women hate that, said several people.
“Oh my god, don’t tell people to do this,” tweeted Vancouver writer Meghan Bell. “I can’t believe we still have to point out that it’s creepy and boundary-violating to hit on someone in an enclosed space they cannot escape from for several hours.”
This sentiment was echoed by Lily Nichol of New Westminster, who added that the best pick-up line is polite silence.
“I live in fear of being seated next to someone who will take my mere seat assignment as an invitation to invade my privacy, -personal space and make me extremely uncomfortable,” she said.
The social-media team at YVR got the message in a hurry and offered an apology for missing the mark. Nobody won aquarium tickets and YVR was quick to establish that the Vancouver Aquarium “was not involved in creating this content.”
HARRISON MOONEY
Vancouver Sun
