One would-be passenger pretended to pack his carry-on bag with tools, in case he needed to make an in-flight repair. Someone else compared the mere act of boarding a commercial flight to the harebrained, death-defying stunts featured on “Jackass.”
“Pray for me, I will have my seatbelt on the entire time,” reads the caption of one TikTok video recorded by an airline passenger as she awaited takeoff. The reason for her concern: Her seat was in the exit row of a Boeing 737 Max.
On TikTok and X, users have been sharing videos and memes poking fun at Boeing, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of commercial jetliners — several of which have figured in headline-making incidents in recent weeks. On Monday, the company announced that its chief executive, Dave Calhoun, would be stepping down at the end of the year, capping off a tumultuous tenure that has included groundings, Covid-related disruptions and a dramatic door-panel blowout.
Although no injuries have been reported as a result of the recent issues, irreverence is the lingua franca of social media, and a rash of alarming headlines has proved more than enough to get some to set their sights on what some have jokingly called Boeing’s “flop era.”
Skylie Shore was recently traveling with a friend from Boston to St. Lucia, with a layover in Miami. Ms. Shore posts as skylietravels on TikTok, where she documents her jet-setting exploits, including trips to Iceland, Mexico and China. Seeing an opportunity to wring a bit of content from the flight, she posted a seven-second video: “Flying on the boeing 737 max 8 … wish us luck.”
Ms. Shore, 21, who is a corporate event planner and travels a lot for work and in her free time, has never had any anxiety with flying until now.
