(Audacy) — A video of a Southwest Airlines pilot giving a feisty pre-flight speech to passengers aboard a Chicago-bound plane has gone viral.
The pilot, jokingly referred to as Captain Phillips in the three TikTok videos, gave a speech about the mask mandate, which was delivered more casually than one may expect — especially when matching the scathing words with his light tone.
The pilot covered most of the usual mask spiel heard before flights these days, just in a mostly sarcastic tone.
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"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," he said.
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."
"You can take your mask down and eat, but you have to put it back up," he continued. "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.
Some in the comments of the videos have shared that they don't like the pilot asserting his opinion. The user who posted them, @Kristaschrader, was quick to respond, saying that he was only joking, not giving an opinion.
The three videos have amassed more than 3 million views on TikTok.