BA customer pays for promoted tweet to criticise airline's service Businessman pays 'undisclosed sum' for complaint against British Airways to be promoted on Twitter Tweet gained more than 25,000 impressions within six hours Commentators say promoted tweets herald new trend in online feedback When his airline lost his father's luggage, Hasan Syed took to Twitter to complain. But instead of griping to his friends and one or two followers about British Airways, the businessman paid to have his tweet promoted - sending it to the top of BA's Twitter feed and the feeds of related companies across the world. Under his handle @HVSVN, Mr Syed's promoted tweet read: 'Don't fly @BritishAirways. Their customer service is horrendous. Complaint: Hasan Syed's tweet has now been removed, but not before it attracted tens of thousands of views Mr Syed bought the promoted tweet through Twitter's self-service ad platform for an undisclosed sum of money. He then followed up his initial message with a series of posts criticising the airline for losing his parents' luggage on their weekend trip from Chicago to Paris. BritishAirways is the worst airline ever. Lost my luggage & can't even track it down. Absolutely pathetic' he wrote. This was followed with: 'Thanks for ruining my EU business trip #britishairways. I shouldn't have flown @BritishAirways. Never flying with you again. Promoted tweets are usually bought by advertisers who want to reach a wider audience, and who pay for the message to appear in high prominence in the Twitter feed of relevant companies. They also appear in search results for a promoted trend and in some cases on users' timelines, while still acting as normal messages that can be retweeted by anyone. But Mr Syed's tweet, which targeted UK and New York markets related to BA, did the exact opposite of advertising the airline. The airline took four hours to respond to Mr Syed via a direct message on the social networking site that read: 'Sorry for the delay in responding, our twitter feed is open 09:00-17:00 GMT. Please DM [direct message] your baggage ref and we'll look into this.' Delay: British Airways lost Mr Syed's parents' luggage during their trip from Chicago to Paris But the tweet had already been read by thousands of viewers, according to aviation marketing cosultants SimpliFlying, and within six hours had gained more than 25,000 impressions on Twitter - not including its coverage on popular blogs such as Mashable, which first reported the story. They blamed the delay on its Twitter feed only being open '0900-1700 GMT,' rather than 24 hours, and asked the customer to send over his luggage information in a direct message. A spokesperson for the airline said: 'We would like to apologise to the customer for the inconvenience caused. We have been in contact with the customer and the bag is due to be delivered today. Marty St. George, senior vice president of marketing at JetBlue, tweeted: 'Interesting; a disgruntled customer is buying a promoted tweet slamming a brand where they had a bad experience. That's a new trend itself!' In 2009, Dave Carroll and his band, Sons of Maxwell, took on United Airlines in 2009 with the video United Breaks Guitars detailing how United had failed to reimburse Carroll after his guitar was broken in 2008. The video went viral. And a complaint letter sent to Richard Branson, complaining about the food on Virgin Atlantic planes, also went viral in 2009. Branson himself phoned the author of the letter for his 'constructive if tongue-in-cheek' email and invited him to select the food and wines for future Virgin flights.