For most of us, travelling during the holidays isn’t always the best of experiences. Banana Republic  and Virgin America took advantage of this “not so fun” situation and bought a little joy to the passengers of Virgin America’s flight 837 from Chicago to San Francisco on December 16th, 2011.

After their long flight, passengers made their way to the baggage claim at SFO airport where to wait for their luggage to arrive on the conveyor belt. However, the first thing they saw wasn’t their luggage, instead carefully wrapped individual gifts boxes appeared with the message “Surprise! This gift is for you… doesn’t matter if you’ve been naughty or nice from Banana Republic and Virgin.”

The brands were inspired by SpanAir‘s “Unexpected Luggage” stunt where the airline gave 190 gifts to its passengers to make sure they were celebrating in Christmas Eve.

Around this time every year I realize how lucky I am to live close to my family and the ones I love. Very often in these times I think of all the people out there that are stuck travelling during this time, stuck in a car, bus or plane.

Great job on both brands for taking an unpleasant situation into a joyful one.