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Extreme Makeover Volunteers

weichinger
Employee
Employee
A couple of weeks ago a few Southwest Employeesehmo-swa-team.jpg in the New Orleans area had the rare chance to participate in the filming for Extreme Makeover Home Edition!  As many of you know, Southwest is a long time sponsor of the show, and we even had the opportunity to incorporate a few airplane rooms into some of the previous episodes. This particular event involved one of our aircraft and the scene was capturing volunteers for the project landing in New Orleans and heading out to the job site.  Now, this sounds really easy, but our turns are so quick in New Orleans (many folks rushing to get their three for one on Bourbon Street or rushing home hoping those photos don't end up on Facebook) that the Extreme Makeover Home Edition Crew had to shoot the scene in about twenty minutes! The flight arrived and we wanted to explain to Customers who were staying on the plane what was happening and why folks were going to run off of their plane cheering. One of the Extreme Makeover designers, Paul DiMeo, jumped on the plane and explained the whole situation to the Customers and even gathered ten volunteers from the plane to join in the fun. Well, all of the volunteers lined up in the jetway welcoming Customers aboard the flight.  We then all jumped on board the aircraft and pushed back from the gate.  Next we pulled some airstairs up to the aircraft and got all the volunteers in place to run off! The scene went off really well and the flight departed on time. We're so thankful that our Customers were good sports and were able to join in the fun.  Goes to show that you never know what might happen on board Southwest...these folks thought they were just heading to Ft. Lauderdale for some R&R! A special thanks to our New Orleans Team.  We couldn't have done it without you! Stay tuned for this episode of Extreme Makeover Home Edition to air in May, you may recognize some of those volunteers!photo-1.JPG
5 Comments
cday
Frequent Flyer C
Hard hats are so hot right now (a la Zoolander voice). Great post Whit!
scottnearsmf
Adventurer B
Just a logistics question. One of the shows featured a family in West Virginia. Is it the practice for the limo to take the family from the town they live to the nearest Southwest city for their vacation. Or... is a charter planned for the nearest airport to their location. What is more common if the family lives a significant (more than 200 miles) from the nearest Southwest airport.
The_Bargain_Sho
Explorer C
That's awesome! Another reason why we all love Southwest Airlines!
Ashley3
Explorer C
Christi: Make that hard hats and big sunglasses!
weichinger
Employee
Employee
The show does transport the family to the closest Southwest Airlines city if it's not too far, but the families do fly other airlines from time to time. Southwest does fly the crew and the designers--and they only fly Southwest!