Santa came early this year to more than 250 Calgary-bound passengers on WestJet Airline flights when they were granted their Christmas wishes.
Unknowing passengers were asked by a virtual Santa Clause what they wanted for Christmas while scanning their boarding passes in the Toronto and Hamilton airports. Upon disembarking their flights, passengers waited for their luggage but were surprised with their Christmas wish wrapped up and moving down the baggage carousel.
Santa’s little helpers for this “Christmas miracle” included 175 WestJet Airline staff members who hustled to buy, wrap, and deliver the presents to the Calgary International Airport in Canada. The stunt took four months of planning to implement.
According to CTV.com, Matt Peltier, one of the lucky passengers with WestJet that day, asked for a flat screen TV. Once all of the other passengers had received their gifts of socks, underwear, and even a Thomas the Tank Engine play set, a huge box was rolled down the baggage carousel.
“I said ‘if that’s a TV, I’m going to cry,’” Peltier told CTV.
It was, of course, the flat screen TV Peltier had asked for on a whim.
When the video went viral, WestJet’s sponsorship lead, Greg Plata, wrote in a blog post that once the video hit 200,000 views, they would give away holiday flights to families in need. According to CBC, the video had 1,099,892 as of 11 a.m. Tuesday, Dec. 10. The video currently has over 10 million views and was uploaded Sunday, Dec. 8.
This is not the first holiday surprise WestJet Airlines has put together. Last holiday season, they spread holiday cheer to passengers heading to Toronto to Calgary by surprising them with a flash mob of singing and dancing elves as well as free ipod shuffles.
