Inside the Plane Where Simple Plan, Hoobastank Performed Mid-Flight

Have you ever been serenaded at 35,000 feet by Hoobastank? We’re betting that answer is no.

But about 125 lucky Southwest Airline passengers got that opportunity on Friday on a charted Southwest Airlines flight from Los Angeles to headed to the Vans Warped Tour in Orlando.

The festivities actually kicked off that morning in Terminal 1 of LAX. At the gate, guests — who were mostly dressed in black, rock-themed attire, with plenty donning sort of Vans apparel, from shoes to purses to hats — were greeted with a rock music playlist as passengers had the opportunity to perform their favorites. (Shout-out to the woman named Gianna who gave a high-energy performance of Fall Out Boy’s “Sugar, We’re Goin Down.”) Then they were invited to a meet-and-greet with recording artists Lolo, Simple Plan, Hoobastank and The Used, all of whom are were on the Vans Warped Tour lineup.

What some of the passengers — who included fans, influences and journalists — didn’t realize is that all four acts were going to perform on the flight to Orlando. The initiative is part of the airline’s Live at 35, an in-flight entertainment program — celebrating its 15th anniversary this year — that surprises passengers with live pop-up music performances and events at 35,000 feet.

Once in the air, singer Lolo kicked things off somewhere over Texas with a four-song set. At one point, Lolo shared that she “almost didn’t take the gig because I’m a nervous flier and this is the longest I’ve gone without wearing a seat belt.” (Incidentally, the flight took off about an hour before the Federal Aviation Administration grounded all U.S. flights “due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety.” The buzz on the plane was that our flight was likely one of very few planes in the air at the time.)

The aforementioned Hoobastank performed a trio of sings, culminating with their 2004 smash hit “The Reason.” During that song, lead singer Doug Robb asked the flight staff to turn off all the lights and the passengers to turn on their cell flashlights, upping the concert vibe inside the aircraft. The passengers also took part in a rousing sing-along to the tune.

“Is this the most annoying flight you’ve ever been on?” Robb joked. Walking through the plane, he swiped an iPad from a passenger who was evidently doing some online shopping. “I think you should buy that,” he joked.

During his set, The Used frontman Bert McCracken noted the unusual “venue” as the flight was passing over New Orleans. “This is the weirdest fucking shit I’ve ever done in my life,” he quipped. The band played four songs, and also turned “The Taste of Ink” into a sing-along. (“Everyone knows the lyrics to this song. It’s called ‘The Reason,’” McCracken joked in a callback to Hoobastank’s crowd-participation performance.)

Simple Plan’s Pierre Bouvier took the stage — floor? aisle? — last, performing songs including “I’d Do Anything.” After the song, he joked, “Give it up for Mark Hoppus,” the Blink-182 singer-bassist who is featured on the song. (Hoppus was not present.)

Bouvier joked it was “super awkward” to perform on a plane, even changing the lyrics to “I’d do anything for you, Vans Warped Tour,” before giving a knowing look and quipping, “Really, anything.” Bouvier also sang “I’m Just a Kid,” noting that it went viral on social media several years after its release as part of the #ImJustAKidChallenge Challenge, where users re-created childhood photographs as adults or adolescents.

As the plane began descending, Bouvier asked the flight crew to turn down the lights, quipping that “the flight crew didn’t know they were going to become the light crew.”

Markus Lloyd is the host for these events, which have featured acts including Julian Marley (son of Bob), the Plain White T’s, Magic!, Shane Smith & The Saints, Barenaked Ladies, Imagine Dragons, Chris Young and Cassidy Pope. “What’s fun” about these experiences, he told THR, “is that when we’re heading someplace fun, like the Vans Warped Tour, or Vegas, the plane has already kind of turned up a bit. And so when you tell them they’re getting this extra thing, it’s like they won the lottery. They’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m going to Vegas AND I get a concert in the place? And that’s when we go, ‘You can’t get this anywhere besides Southwest.’”

For an encore on Friday’s flight, Hoobastank got up to perform one last song just moments before the flight landed safely in Orlando.