Even Airlines Are Cashing in on Taylor Swift-Super Bowl Fever

For the fourth time in five years, the Kansas City Chiefs will be playing in the Super Bowl. That this year’s game is a rematch of 2020’s contest, in which the Chiefs played the 49ers, is but one of several narratives that have converged on this year’s contest. While most of those storylines have to do with the game being a formidable competition pitting two groups of elite athletes against one another to determine a victor, there’s also the pop-culture component of the event to take into consideration.

Or, to phrase it another way: how does Taylor Swift factor into all of this?

For starters, there’s the question of whether she’ll be there at all. As The Athletic’s Alex Andrejev pointed out, Swift is scheduled to play in Tokyo on February 10 with the game slated for the next day — and the logistics of flying from Tokyo to Las Vegas on Super Bowl weekend are, as you might guess, a little tricky.

Still, the challenges Swift would face in getting to the game hasn’t stopped some airlines from riffing on her possible attendance as a way of promoting their flights to Vegas. As Sean Cudahy reported at The Points Guy, both United and American Airlines riffed on all things Swift — including flight numbers from both airlines named in homage to one of her albums. Two Vegas-bound flights from Kansas City from American have been designated “AA1989” and one similar flight from United has been given the code “UA1989.”

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The Chiefs and 49ers will be playing in the desert on February 11

These aren’t the only homages these airlines have announced. Cudahy writes that other route numbers nod in the direction of players like Travis Kelce and Patrick Mahomes and the year that the 49ers last won the Super Bowl. The Super Bowl is already one of the biggest events in the country. Evidently, there’s one way to make it even bigger: add arguably the biggest musical artist in the world into the mix.

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Tobias Carroll

Tobias Carroll lives and writes in New York City, and has been covering a wide variety of subjects — including (but not limited to) books, soccer and drinks — for many years. His writing has been published by the likes of the Los Angeles Times, Pitchfork, Literary Hub, Vulture, Punch, the New York Times and Men’s Journal. At InsideHook, he has…