The year 2011 will go down in Qantas's history as one of its worst. It was the year that saw the air carrier hit by several strikes from pilots, ground crew and aircraft engineers. As a result, Qantas Chief Executive Alan Joyce unilaterally grounded the air carrier's fleet for two days, causing major disruption in travel plan of Qantas passengers.

Besides wreaking havoc on Qantas finances, the grounding of its jets was considered by the Web site Dynamic Business as the top 10 PR disaster in Australia in 2011.

According to the PR watchdog and blog, PRDisasters.com, Qantas not only had the biggest PR blunder last year, it had the most with three in the top 10 list.

Qantas also got the second and fifth spots in the list for its luxury pyjamas Twitter promo and rugby union competition.

The watchdog based its listing through CyberChatter, an online monitoring agency. Those that were considered PR disasters were incidents that catalysed sustained, negative media coverage for the brand, business or person at the centre of the story.

Following two days of flight disruption which affected about 100,000 Qantas passengers, Qantas reported a $200 million loss for the second half of the financial year which was the same year that Mr Joyce got a hefty pay raise.

In turn, Virgin Australia benefited from Qantas blunders with a 3.5 per cent increase in domestic passenger traffic in November when it flew 1.42 million domestic travelers, up from 1.37 million the previous month.

As a result, satisfaction rating of Qantas dropped to 84 per cent in November from a high of 87 per cent in June, while for the same period Virgin Australia closed the gap by getting an 82 per cent satisfaction rating from 80 per cent, according to the latest Roy Morgan Airline Customer Satisfaction Report.

Barely a month after the grounding of its fleet, Qantas tried to make up for lost ground by launching a competition in microblogging site Twitter. Qantas asked people to describe their dream luxury in-flight experience with the air carrier offering gift packs as prize.

However, the competition drew angry responses from Qantas travelers.

"Qantas Luxury means sipping champagne on your corporate jet while grounding the entire airline, country, customers and staff," BBC quoted one Twitter.

Another complained of taking almost a month to get a refund while social media commentator Peter Clarke described the PR campaign as an epic failure and an excellent case study in corporate cultural tone deafness.

Even Qantas admitted that at rate complaints were pouring in versus real luxury experiences, it would have taken years to judge the winner.

In the third Qantas PR blunder, the embattled air carrier asked competitors through Twitter to tell how they intend to show their support for the Wallabies that was then competing at the Bledisloe Cup.

The winner, Charles Butler, and another man dressed as Radike Samo complete with an Afro wig, and Australian rugby kit and black facepaint. The two won free tickets worth $378 to the match, but the embarrassed air carrier had to issue later an apology for declaring the pair winners and removed the photo of the two in Qantas' Twitter page.

The photo was denounced as racist, but ironically, Mr Samo did not find any offense.

"These guys were actually paying me a tribute. It was a bit of fun, and I think they regarded me as their favourite Wallaby. I don't have an issue with it al all, I was glad to be in a photo with them," Stuff.co.nz quote the Wallaby.

Stephen Ryan, the chairman of the New South Wales Aboriginal Land Council said that while he was shocked by the behaviour of the two winners, he was surprised that Qantas failed to anticipate that such a PR gimmick would backfire.

"It's hard to believe that a company that has used Aboriginal iconography to try and improve its image didn't know that this could easily be construed as racist," Mr Ryan said.

These PR disasters should be a lesson for companies and individuals, public relations expert Catriona Pollard pointed out.

These lessons include testing theory on a smaller audience, doing research, choosing the right spokesperson, not underestimating the power of social media and thinking before sending.

"In a world of social media and 24 hour news a simple mistake can now quickly turn into a PR disaster reaching a wider audience faster than ever before," she said.