Russian Flight Attendant Tatiana Kozlenko Fired For Giving The Finger To A Plane Full Of Passengers

Russian flight attendant Tatiana Kozlenko was recently fired after an old photo came out of her giving the finger to a plane full of passengers.

Kozlenko, who worked for Aeroflot, posted the photo on the Russian social networking site Vkontakte and found herself without a job after the depiction of her giving the finger went viral, according to the Huffington Post.

Though the photo of Kozlenko’s finger was first posted in October 2011, it only went viral within the last few weeks after the Russian blogger Ilya Varlamov picked up on the story. The photo and the picture of Kozlenko were soon posted all around Twitter, becoming something of a sensation in Russia.

Before long, the photo came to the attention of Aeroflot’s management, which reacted by swiftly firing Kozlenko. Aeroflot announced the firing publicly on Twitter.

"Posting this photo shows Tatiana’s attitude towards passengers and her duties. She acknowledged her fault when she spoke to her managers,” read a translation of Aeroflot’s official Twitter account, according to RT.

While Aeroflot claims that Kozlenko “acknowledged her fault” when she was fired, Kozlenko is insisting that it wasn’t her finger or her company’s airplane in the offending picture. She claims that she only tagged herself in the picture as a joke to express her frustrations.

“I don’t consider myself guilty! The photo was added to my page, I only tagged myself on it!!!” Kozlenko wrote on her personal Vkontakte page, according to The Sun. “The hand isn’t mine, the plane is not my company’s!!! I don’t understand what they spoil my life for!!! I’m asking you for help and support!!!”