A group of Canadian college students celebrated their graduation ceremony on a flight, after their university shut due to coronavirus.
Four students from Briercrest College in Saskatchewan were flying home after attending the CCAA National Women’s Volleyball Championships in Québec City – but were surprised by an on-board celebration.
Rebecca Garner, Ashley Erickson, Elicia Wiebe and Kirsty Kindrachuk found out that their classes and graduation had been cancelled right before they made their journey home – but airline crew caught wind of this during the flight.
Before the group landed, the Canadian airline WestJet flight attendants held a small ‘graduation ceremony’ on the plane.
In a video shared online, an announcement can be heard explaining that the girls would miss their ceremony and, because they had spent a lot of money on tuition, the crew would host one for them.
In the footage, the students can be seen walking up the plane aisle to collect their individual degrees, with people even humming parts of ‘Pomp and Circumstance’ (the traditional US graduation march) as they go up.
The cabin crew wrote out each student’s degree on a meal container lid, which they handed to them as diplomas – with each one reading ‘West Jet Diploma of Excellence.’ The students were also treated to a bag full of treats, such as Kit-Kats.
‘We put a lot of work into this,’ a crew member can be heard joking in a video.
Shae McIntyre, a men’s volleyball player at Red Deer College – whose team was also travelling home on the WestJet flight – told People: ‘They announced their names and degree over the intercom and [the women] received an ovation from the passengers as they walked the aisle to collect their “official degree.”’
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