Delta Sorry for 'H8GAYS' Boarding Pass

Delta Air Lines apologized for what they called a "completely random" confirmation code that had one passenger's boarding pass reading "H8GAYS."

According to an article in Gay Star News, student Jeff White was traveling from Florida to New York via Atlanta earlier this month when he discovered the inadvertently offensive confirmation code.

"At first I didn't think I read it right," White told The Washington Post. "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 apologized for any concern or misunderstanding, saying that the situation was a random computer result.

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

White told the Post that he would prefer that Delta's IT department remove such offensive codes from their roster of computer-generated possibilities.

"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."