MINNEAPOLIS — Bassist and Delta Airlines pilot Chris Hamming swore today he had no idea how, minutes before his Boeing 757 was about to take off from the Minneapolis/St. Paul Airport, his band’s demo tape began to play over the PA to a full cabin of passengers.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking,” Hamming said over the PA after nearly a minute of abrasive funk/punk played to nearly 200 travelers. “Hope you enjoyed the music. It’s a bit embarrassing, but that was my band’s demo tape — no idea how that started playing, but I hope you liked it. There’s more information about the band in your seatbacks, including Bandcamp links and a digital download code for anyone in our SkyMiles program. Thank you.”
However, members of the flight staff were skeptical of the captain’s claim that the music was an accident.
“That was absolutely on purpose. I saw him plugging the AUX cord into his phone when I brought him some chips,” said airline flight attendant Lisa Campbell. “Not to mention the fact that as soon as it started playing, I saw him peeking his head through the door… probably to see if anyone was bobbing their heads or something. Most people just ignored it — it sounds like a rejected Red Hot Chili Peppers song.”
An already tense situation was made worse when takeoff was mysteriously delayed.
“We were already behind schedule because Delta is the worst, but then the captain got back on the intercom and said they received word from the tower that it looked like we were going to be delayed for about two minutes and fifteen seconds,” said business class passenger Noah Winter. “And wouldn’t you know it, that was exactly the length of time it took to play another one of the captain’s songs. I thought the flight attendant rapping on Southwest flights was bad, but this made me want to look into taking more trains.”
As passengers deplaned after the flight, Hamming was seen passing out flyers to his upcoming show in Phoenix the next day. However, several passengers reminded Hamming that they had just landed in St. Louis and had no intention of attending.