Kyran Ashford’s goal each day is to make people smile.
A passenger departing the Greater Rochester International Airport in Rochester, New York, on Oct. 20 caught Ashford, an operations agent supervisor at the airport, in action. A video posted on Facebook by musician Terry McBride shows Ashford dancing and shimmying down the tarmac as he directs McBride’s flight away from the gate.
"So this just happened out my window as I was leaving New York headed back home to Nashville," McBride wrote. "This guy rocks! #TarmacDancer #EmployeeOfTheMonth #TGIF #Southwest"
As of Thursday morning, the video had received eight million views.
Neither McBride nor Ashford expected the video to go viral. Ashford caught wind of his popularity as news outlets, first locally, then nationally and internationally, started sharing the video.
"I had no clue that I made the news!" Ashford wrote Monday on Facebook.
McBride expressed similar sentiments on Wednesday.
"I had no idea when I filmed Kyran Ashford dancing on the tarmac that the video would go viral," the musician wrote.
Ashford told the Democrat & Chronicle in Rochester that his dance moves are something passengers get on a regular basis, along with rap songs from behind the desk at the gate. Ashford, who has been an employee at the airport for the past five years, currently works with JetStream Ground Services, servicing Southwest Airlines.
He splits his time scanning boarding passes as passengers ready for departure and directing aircraft and loading luggage on the tarmac, the Democrat & Chronicle reported. Ashford has his own YouTube channel, which includes video of some of his antics while at work.
A new video, titled “The Tarmac Dancer Presents: The Boarding Process,” was posted Thursday morning. The video, recorded by a passenger, shows Ashford rapping to his audience, many of whom clap along as he sings.
"Everything I've been doing, that's all a part of who I am," Ashford told the newspaper. "My mother raised me to be the type of man to walk around with great character, and that people should never be ashamed of who they are."
Ashford said his goal is to make stressed out passengers feel joy.
“You don’t know why these people are flying out,” he said. “They could be going to a funeral.”
His colleagues say that his philosophy works.
"He makes people feel comfortable in stressful situations," Lawrence Kleinman, local Southwest manager, told the Democrat & Chronicle. "The animation is sincere."
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