While there was once a time in which a bad travel experience would be discussed over the dinner table, the rise of social media has helped both many an airline and unruly passenger go viral — sometimes deservedly and sometimes not.
At the start of April 2023, there were viral videos of a Southwest (LUV) passenger yelling over a crying baby, a Spirit Airlines (SAVE) flight attendant ranting about the airline's extra charge policy and four passengers aboard a regional Australian airline fighting and smashing windows mid-flight.
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The latest video to start making the rounds on ByteDance-owned TikTok displays an airport worker using tape to repair the wing of an airplane while the plane full of passengers sits on the tarmac.
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'You Have To Tape The Plane Together'
"And this is the reason why I don't fly with Spirit," TikToker @myhoneysmack says while filming the worker. "I don't care if it is aviation airplane tape or nothing, the fact that you have to tape the plane together and then you're doing it while people are on the flight like we cannot see you.”
The video quickly gathered nearly a million views and over 147,000 likes. In it, the traveler says that she could do "Southwest" but will say "no sir" to Spirit after seeing this happe.
While some commenters echoed the traveler's surprise, others pointed explained that it was most likely speed tape — an aluminum-based that is the standard way for airlines to make minor repairs.
"This is called Speed Tape used to perform minor repairs on airplanes," wrote one user. "Every airline uses it including SouthWest."
'Chatter About Speed Tape' Not New, Says Spirit
A Spirit representative confirmed that it was indeed speed tape to TheStreet and said that "chatter" around its use in the industry isn't new — a similarly viral photo from a passenger on an Australian Qantas Airways (QUBSF) flight in the fall of 2022.
While it may look like an adhoc repair to laypeople, industry experts say that speed tape is completely safe for repairs that do not require a plane to be immediately taken out of commission. It can generally withstand winds of 600 miles per hour and a temperature of up to -300 degrees Fahrenheit.
"There's never going to be a piece of garden-variety duct tape used on an airplane," former pilot and airplane safety consultant John Nance told the Washington Post in October 2022. "So if you’re looking at it, it's called speed tape, and it's very, very specifically designed to do whatever it is they're trying to make it do.”
Some commenters also poked fun at the poster who claimed she doesn't "fly with Spirit" from the inside a Spirit plane but the optics of seeing airplane parts taped together still regularly freak out many outside the industry.
"After a while, they're going to need a fresh new roll of tape," she says sarcastically at the end of the video. "Their tape's going to lose all its stickiness. You're flying all around the world and you got tape holding it together."
