NEW YORK — If riding in cars with beautiful models as drivers sounds like a dream, it’s time to wake up.
Uber has. The ridesharing service canceled its “Avions de Chasse” promotion (a slang term for “incredibly hot chick”) before any men could take advantage of a free (twenty-minutes only) fantasy ride.
The promotion — headed up by the Uber Lyon, Fra. office — was a joint effort with a French website by the same name, Avions de Chasse.
Buzzfeed first reported on the sexist deal on Tuesday (by that time, Uber had already taken down the page for the offer).
Now, Uber wants everyone to forget the idea ever happened.
“It was a clear misjudgment by the local team,” wrote an Uber spokesperson in an email statement.
A tweet from the local French office @UberLyon expressed a similar sentiment: “We have canceled the partnership as on this occasion we clearly misjudged the situation. We apologise to anyone that has been offended.”
Pierre Garonnaire, co-founder of the year-old website Avions de Chasse, said the program was supposed to be a free three day trial in Lyon. Uber customers would book “Avions de Chasse through Uber’s app.
Depending on its success, the service might then roll out in other French cities like Paris and Bordeaux. (Uber currently operates in six cities throughout France, and over 200 cities worldwide.)
“They didn’t anticipate the reaction of Uber U.S.,” said Garonnaire. “In the U.S., you are more Puritan. For me and most of the people of France, it was a good [idea]. It was fun.”
Garionnaire said Uber asked him to pull the video promo — though he himself was comfortable with the partnership and didn’t feel that the promotional video was “sexy.”
“It’s a pretty girl who arrives in a cab, and a boy opens the door,” he said of the video.
As for the creepy twenty minute time limit that makes the service sound all the more taboo?
That was a practical rule that some seem to have misinterpreted.
“We don’t want the cab to go outside the city,” said Garionnaire. “It’s [also] for the safety of the girl. It’s not an escort service.”
