Virgin Australia appears to insult Kanye West in tweet

Virgin Australia is investigating how a tweet that appears to label Kanye West a "douche" was posted from its official Twitter account.

The tweet which was sent yesterday was deleted within a minute of posting but not before it was seen and shared by thousands of the airline's 210,000 followers.

The offensive comment was in reply to the US rapper's own tweet in which he attacked a seemingly stellar review by Pitchfork magazine that gave his new album 'The Life of Pablo' a score of nine out of 10. Kanye tweeted that in his view "the album is a 30 out of 10".

That's when Virgin appears to have entered the fray tagging West in a reply that said "EAD you douche".

EAD stand for "eat a d--k'.

The post was swiftly deleted but the damage was done with the comment being screengrabbbed, retweeted and favourited a number of times.

Virgin Australia has denied any involvement in the tweet but apologised for any offence caused in a statement.

"A recent tweet on our account was not published by a Virgin Australia employee and we are investigating the matter," the statement said.