Millions of people were inconvenienced or worse by the FAA grounding all plane travel earlier this week, as numerous flights were cancelled and even more were delayed for hours or even days. Frustrated travelers in the United States are still waiting for a full explanation from the transportation administration, but it turns out at least one person was happy about the unprecedented outages: Colin Jost.
The longtime Weekend Update anchor noticed everyone’s collective pain and saw it as an opportunity to make the funniest and most self-centered joke possible on the latest Weekend Update. After running down the basic facts of what happened, Jost used the opportunity to hilariously hype his much-discussed ferry boat service, which, notably, was not affected by the air traffic control issues. Here’s a portion of his quote from Saturday Night Live…
Thousands of flights were cancelled. Tens of thousands of flights have been delayed. Well, well, well, suddenly ferry transportation is looking pretty reliable.
Jost’s Staten Island Ferry, which he bought on a whim with Pete Davidson and nicknamed Titanic II, has been a recurring source of comedy on Weekend Update since the SNL stars bought it back in 2022. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but in the years since, it has since turned into an expensive mess, as the pair have had to navigate permit problems, expensive repairs and constant jokes from fans, the writers on The Simpsons and even Davidson’s own wife Scarlett Johansson.
Recently, Jost and his longtime co-anchor Michael Che have started using it as a semi-regular source of comedy on Weekend Update. If there’s a chance to shoehorn in a joke about the ferry boat, they rarely miss the opportunity. In fact, it’s even started making its way into the occasional non-Update sketch, as it gets a big laugh every single time it’s referenced.
You can watch the latest Weekend Update below. The bit about the FAA is first, though there’s a series of jokes that start with a bit about how no one was more pleased than Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who was happy for everyone to get a different news story to talk about.
One of the reasons why Jost and Che’s version of Weekend Update has crushed for so long is precisely because of jokes like this ferry boat one. The two have consistently proven that they’re willing to laugh about anything, even if they’re ultimately the victim of the joke. That makes them seem more relatable, and it makes the audience more comfortable about laughing at other things that might be a little more racy or off-color. It’s like if they’re all in on it, then we’re in on it too.
If you haven’t watched the whole SNL episode yet, I can’t recommend it enough. Former writer John Mulaney returned to host, and as always, he delivered a dynamite episode that included another musical, multiple Bowen Yang appearances and a few sketches that hit so close to home that fans on social didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
