Air India’s ‘Free air tickets’ take 600 Facebook users for a ride

Nearly 600 profiles on a social networking site fell prey to a spam message that claimed to offer two free air tickets on Air India as the airline was celebrating its 30th birthday on Monday.

Falling for the lure of free tickets, the message went viral on Facebook — having been posted by as many as 600 profiles between 3 pm and 7 pm on Monday.

The airline finally sprung out of its stupor following the mass sharing and took to twitter to deny the existence of such an offer.

“Please note this is misleading information, no such promotion is being offered by AI at this time,” its official twitter handle posted. However, despite the clarification from the national carrier, sharing of the post continued throughout the day.

The message that was posted on Monday and circulated on Facebook read, “Air India is giving away 2 Free Tickets to Celebrate 30th Birthday! Tickets are limited Hurry up.” Also the post carried a comment of the person who had posted it that said, “Thanks for my ticket.”

Pankaj Mishra, a student, whose was one of the profiles to share the link, said as soon as he clicked on the link, a web page opened where he was asked to mention all his details and once that was done, the page got redirected to his own Facebook profile. “I guess Air India is making a fool of us and they are collecting data from phone and FB,” Mr Mishra said.

A top official of the airline told The Asian Age that the website carrying the post did not belong to the airline. “Air India came into existence in 1983, so the celebration of its 30th anniversary is over; hence there’s no question about such an offer,” he said.

Aabha Padgaonkar, a television industry professional, also saw the same link. “When I opened the link it asked me to type my name and number, after which the web page asked me to share the post to get free tickets. After sharing, the page asked me to like it too, and the moment I liked it, the web page showed a message saying ‘if you want to get the ticket, share the post with 15 people’. By this time, I realised it is a fake link, and left the process,” she said.

However, many people feared their Facebook page had been hacked as once they clicked on the link, it automatically appeared on their Facebook walls. Many expressed their fear on Twitter, following which AI responded through its official Twitter handle denying such as offer.