Delta Airlines Randomly Generates "H8GAYS" On A Passenger's Boarding Pass, Apologizes Profusely

Whoops.

When Jeff White printed his boarding pass, he was more than shocked to find "H8GAYS" was his randomly generated confirmation code, The Washington Post reports.

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"At first I didn't think I read it right," says White, a student at the University of West Florida. "I was worried that another customer might think I somehow picked that code. If I were a gay male, I might have thought that a Delta worker purposely gave me that code, and that would have made me extremely uncomfortable."

Delta was very sorry.

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Delta apologized for any “concern or misunderstanding” its code may have caused him.

“These confirmation codes are computer-generated and are completely random,” said Russell Cason, a Delta spokesman. “We will make every effort to ensure that a similar combination does not occur in the future.”

White, who was flying from Florida to New York by way of Atlanta, said Delta can ensure no one gets a code like that again.

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“I’m an IT major, and what surprises me is that they didn’t block [his confirmation code] as a possibility of the string of random numbers and letters in the software they use to generate” the code he says.

“I’m sure they removed many four-letter words that would be seen as offensive. I’m surprised that ‘gays’ and ‘H8’ weren’t blocked as well.”