“For no good reason I had had a slur marked over my luggage. I was degraded. I was shamed. I was humiliated,” the stay-at-home dad wrote on his blog.
An Australia-based airline apologized to a passenger after he reportedly found his suitcase covered in the airline's baggage sticker tags reading, "I Am Gay."
The Queensland, New Zealand man, who goes by Aaron on Twitter, said he was publicly humiliated upon retrieving the luggage at Perth Airport over the weekend after a Jetstar Airways flight.
Jetstar has apologized and said an investigation into the incident is underway.
"We are taking this matter very seriously and we have contacted the passenger to apologise for any distress caused," a spokesperson told News.com.au.
My suitcase was the first bag on the carousel. The entire flight's passengers were shoulder-to-shoulder looking for their bags and I'm pretty sure that most people would've seen mine rattling along the rollers. I saw a big red case approaching and excused my way through the throng in order to retrieve it. I noticed some white bits on the side and turned back, apologising to the people who I had just pushed passed. "False alarm," I said to one gent. Then I realised that it actually was my bag and that the white bits were the sign you see in the image above.
I plucked the suitcase off the carousel and had many eyes look me up and down. I was taken aback by the slogan but thought I had thick enough skin to ignore the leering. My connecting flight was about to board so I had to speed through the terminal to check in with Qantas. As I dragged the case through the terminal, I looked back at the people I had passed and they too looked at me differently. My luggage was a scarlet letter.
