How a “nightmare flight” became the Red Sox’s strangest — and most unifying — team tradition
Baseball teams bond in a hundred different ways — through walk-offs, late-night bus rides, and locker room pranks. But for the 2025 Boston Red Sox, the moment that brought them closest together didn’t happen on the field or in the clubhouse. It happened 30,000 feet in the air.
The story, now legend within the team, began with what was supposed to be a routine cross-country flight from Texas to Boston. The Sox had just been swept in a brutal series, and the mood aboard the team charter was heavy. Players were exhausted, the staff silent. But what unfolded over the next four hours transformed frustration into laughter — and eventually, into a new Red Sox ritual that’s as bizarre as it is beloved.
“It started with turbulence,” said one player, smiling. “And ended with karaoke, broken pretzel bags, and Trevor Story doing impressions of Alex Cora at 3 a.m.”
From fear to full-blown comedy
The turbulence hit about an hour into the flight. Drinks spilled, players gripped their armrests, and rookie Ceddanne Rafaela reportedly screamed, “If I make it, I’m never flying again!” The cabin lights flickered. But once the plane stabilized, something changed.
Instead of retreating into silence, the team erupted into laughter — the kind of unfiltered, exhausted laughter that only happens when adrenaline and camaraderie collide.
“Someone yelled, ‘We survived!’” recalled Jarren Duran. “Then someone else cranked up the music. Next thing you know, Story’s doing impressions, Houck’s handing out cookies like flight attendants, and the whole plane’s singing.”
From that chaos came a ritual.
The birth of “Flight Mode”
When the team landed in Boston the next morning, Cora walked into the clubhouse to find players still joking about “Flight Mode” — their new term for shutting out stress and embracing chaos together. Within days, it became part of their pregame routine.
Before every series, the Red Sox now hold a short “Flight Mode” moment — dimming the lights, blasting music from the flight playlist, and sharing something that made them laugh that week. It’s unconventional, even weird, but it works.
“Baseball is pressure,” said Trevor Story. “You need something that reminds you to breathe, to laugh, to just be human again. That flight gave us that.”
Even Cora, known for his fiery competitiveness, approved. “That night could’ve broken them,” he said. “Instead, it brought them together. You can’t coach that.”
The chemistry you can’t fake
Teams often talk about “chemistry,” but few can pinpoint the exact moment it forms. For Boston, it was somewhere over the Midwest at 2:17 a.m.
Since that night, the Red Sox have looked looser, more connected — and it shows. Veterans have taken rookies under their wings, postgame interviews are filled with inside jokes, and the dugout energy feels unmistakably different.
“When you laugh with someone during a scary moment,” Duran said, “you don’t forget that. You stop seeing teammates — you start seeing brothers.”
A story that keeps flying
The “nightmare flight” story has now taken on a life of its own. Fans have begun tagging their social media posts with #FlightMode, celebrating the team’s newfound joy and resilience.
And every time the Red Sox take off for another road trip, someone inevitably shouts:
“Seatbelts on, boys — it’s Flight Mode time!”
What began as turbulence has become the ultimate metaphor for this team: learning to find calm in chaos, laughter in fear, and unity in every storm.
As one veteran put it best: “We didn’t just survive that flight. We learned how to fly again.”
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