Southwest Airlines Passengers On This Lucky Flight All Received A Free Nintendo Switch

Flying on a cramped commercial aircraft can be quite the ordeal for a lot of people out there. To help get through the flight, many take notebooks, tablets, smartphones, or portable game consoles like the Nintendo Switch with them. Southwest Airlines and Nintendo did something very cool for passengers aboard a random flight this week.

Each of the passengers on the flight were handed cards telling them they received a free Nintendo Switch game console and a copy of Super Mario Maker 2 thanks to Southwest and Nintendo. That is a $300 freebie for happening to be on the right flight at the right time, and probably made more than a few people's days.

What's even cooler is when they got off the aircraft their free consoles were waiting on them. The passengers were handed red bags with the console inside with no strings attached. As for why the consoles weren't given out at boarding to give folks something to do, we assume it has to do with not wanting to wade through mounds of Nintendo Switch boxes as people ripped into the consoles to alleviate the boredom.

Super Mario Maker 2 is one of the most popular Switch games that has launched on the console so far; it sold over 196,000 copies since it launched in Japan. Nintendo announced a refreshed version of the Switch not long ago that has much longer battery life of up to nine hours. The updated Nintendo Switch consoles are labeled HAC-001(-01), and the old version is labeled HAC-001. It's not clear if the passengers on the Southwest flight were given the new Switch console or the old one. Either way, a free game console is a heck of a thank you for flying Southwest.