Saturday Night Live (SNL) has delivered once again with another well-executed slandering skit. The victim this time? Alaska Airlines. The skit featuring Jacob Elordi as a guest star and commenting on the recent incident involving a door plug being ejected from an Alaska Airlines jet 16,000 feet over Portland, was modeled after a typical safety video you would watch before takeoff. “Bragging” about the inflight addition of extra emergency exits, a safety manual comparable to a Harry Potter book in size, as well as being “prepared” by taking off with the emergency slide deployed.
To quote: “That’s why our new slogan is: Alaska Airlines, you didn’t die, and you got a cool story… You know those bolts that like hold the plane together? We’re going to go ahead and tighten some of those.” They also say they’ve brought “Sully,” the U.S. Airways captain famous for his 2009 emergency landing on the Hudson River in New York, out of retirement. The skit ends with a “flight attendant” saying that the pilot high on shrooms is now proudly their second worst flight.
The incident grounded about 144 airplanes, 65 from Alaska and 79 from United. Alaska has already cleared over 20 jets to return to service, and United has cleared over 30. This is an unfortunate start to an otherwise very promising 2024 for Alaska, as they are midway through acquiring Hawaiian Airlines, which will comfortably put them as the fifth largest U.S. airline. The door plugs, installed by Spirit Aerosystems (not Spirit Airlines, though that would have explained a lot), had an issue where bolts were backing themselves out from vibrations, and on this jet, enough of them backed to blow out the plug and make a new emergency exit.
Despite the severity of the situation, the skit brought fun to what was almost a tragic situation. To some, it may seem tone-deaf, but there’s just a point in these types of things where it’s so ridiculous making fun of it is the easiest way to talk about it.
