A video has gone viral showing a Southwest Airlines Pilot giving a pre-flight speech to passengers aboard a flight leaving for Chicago.
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The pilot referred to as Captain Phillips in the three TikTok videos, gave his speech about the mask mandate and it was delivered more casually than one might expect -- especially when matching up the scathing words with the light tone.
"The masks. There is not an eye roll that you could give me that I have not seen 750,000 times in the last year," Phillips said.
Phillips covered most of the usual mask spiel heard before flights these days, just in a mostly sarcastic tone.
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The pilot shared that requiring his passengers to wear masks was nothing more than a rule.
"It's not a political statement; it's not me taking your rights away, it's not me exerting my will on you," Phillips said.
As allowed on flights, passengers are allowed to eat, and Phillips had a joke for that as well.
"You can take your mask down and eat, but you have to put it back up," he said. "If you were smart, you would have gone to Costco and bought the seven-pound bag of potato chips that would have lasted you one hour and 43 minutes."
While the speech was meant to be humorous, it, in some ways, highlights the stress that pilots have been under.
Over the past month, there have been threats of strikes due to overscheduling, as airlines continue to return flights to their schedules but remain at the same level of staffing for pilots.
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Some in the comments of the videos have shared that they don't like Phillips asserting his opinion. The user who posted them, @Kristaschrader, was quick to respond, saying that Phillips was only joking, not giving an opinion.
The three videos have amassed over 3 million views on TikTok and made their way around other social media platforms like Twitter.