Is Southwest's SI Swimsuit Model Airplane Backfiring?

(MoneyWatch)  This week, Southwest rolled out an airplane with an enormous decal of Sports Illustrated's swimsuit edition cover model Bar Refaeli lying down along the fuselage. They thought this would be an excellent promotion for the airline, but it appears that it may have backfired.

It all started earlier this week when Southwest said it would be offering riddles on Twitter for people to be able to guess the big news that they would reveal later in the week. I initially thought it would be something along the lines of releasing their schedule for LaGuardia, but no. Instead, it was this massive billboard on the side of the plane.

The public reaction has been, at best, mixed. Comments began flooding the blog, and most of them were negative. For example,

Very tacky. I know Southwest is notorious for it's fun, but this is simply in bad taste. I'm very surprised at their decision especially in an economic time that loss of customers is crucial. I suppose it could go the other way, but how many teen-age boys are fare paying customers?

Many picked up on the irony of the situation. If you remember Kyla Ebbert, you recall that she was not allowed to fly forced to cover up before she flew because she wasn't dressed appropriately. Many commenters are picking up on this.

Are you kidding me?!? This looks like a flying porn ad! I'm a longtime fan of SWA, this is one reason for me to change airlines. Jim Dawson's post was right-on, "Southwest would (rightfully) not permit anyone dressed this way to fly in their aircraft so as to not offend other customers. But somehow they don't seem to mind offending their passengers from the outside of the aircraft."

In the end, the impact probably won't be bad. I bet the above commenter won't change airlines at all because of this. Ultimately, this commenter said it best.

Southwest never claimed to have first class but I've never thought of them as low class either (UNTIL NOW). They may be getting noticed, but it's in a negative manner. Guess bad attention is better than no attention at all.

[Updated 12/16 @ 110p to reflect that Kyla Ebbert wasn't removed from the aircraft but rather forced to cover up.]