News of Taylor Swift‘s boyfriend Travis Kelce‘s arrival in Australia took over the airwaves on Thursday as a live countdown featured across morning television.
Across all Australian TV channels the same live footage of the American football tight end, 34, touching down at Sydney airport was shown as excitement overran the country.
Channel 7’s Sunrise and Today on Nine both eagerly tracked Taylor’s Bombardier Global 6000 private jet as it carried her boyfriend Down Under for their reunion.
A Sunrise star even revealed the intense public interest at one point even ‘crashed’ an app tracking Kelce’s private jet.
The jet touched down at Sydney Airport shortly before 9am on Thursday as Travis finally arrived to reunite with Taylor, 34, amid her Australian Eras tour.
As the flight travelled across the Pacific Ocean from Hawaii, breakfast television shows eagerly tracked the plane’s journey and waited at the airport for its arrival.
On Today, Karl Stefanovic and his co-hosts spoke to reporter Jack Hahn live at the airport as they kept viewers in the loop about the private jet’s progress.
However, Karl, 49, failed to impress with a joke about Travis’ flashy jet as the studio descended into awkward silence while he tried to keep viewers entertained.
After Jack was seen doing his best impersonation of Travis to mark his arrival Down Under, Karl boasted about his own private jet experiences.
Attempting to make a joke, Karl confidently said: ‘Well, all I’ll say about private jets is that the turbulence is the same [as on commercial flights].’
However, the joke fell completely flat as the studio descended into silence, with Karl laughing and hitting the table in exasperation at the very awkward moment.
His co-host Brooke Boney simply said: ‘I didn’t get it,’ before hilariously putting on a very fake laugh.
Not long after, the program showed the private jet landing live on the runway at Sydney Airport as the hosts yelled ‘touchdown’ in an obvious NFL reference.
Elsewhere on Sunrise, Natalie Barr and Matt Shirvington also got involved with the tracking as they had reporter Liam Tapper live at the scene waiting for the flight to land.
The co-hosts were seen keeping an eye on the jet via a live flight tracker, which they revealed temporarily crashed amid a huge number of Swifties tracking the plane.
Liam revealed: ‘We’ve been refreshing the flight tracker app. It even crashed at one point, they had their engineers working on it, such is the interest in Travis’ flight!’
As the plane edged towards the West Coast, Matt told viewers: ‘If you have really good binoculars, I reckon you could see him from the edge of Australia there.’
But Natalie seemed very unconvinced as she replied: ‘OK, good luck on that!’
As Matt and Natalie watched the private jet land live, they couldn’t help but get involved with the NFL-themed gags as they also yelled ‘touchdown’ when the plane hit the tarmac.
Matt shouted: ‘Touchdown Kelce! He has scored over 70 touchdowns in his NFL career, this is the greatest of all time,’ before dancing in delight in the studio.
Aerial footage showed Travis descending the steps of Taylor’s Bombardier Global 6000 and making his way to a parked silver car on the tarmac.
Before jetting off to Sydney, Travis had returned to Las Vegas – the site of the Chiefs’ third Super Bowl victory in five years – on Tuesday, just over a week since hoisting the Lombardi Trophy at Allegiant Stadium.
But, after reportedly grabbing a quick dinner at Nobu Malibu in Los Angeles, he was said to have hopped on a flight from the West Coast to Hawaii at around 9pm PT.
He appeared to have taken off from Van Nuys Airport last night, stopping in Honolulu to refuel before carrying on to Sydney, landing at 8.57am on Thursday.
Amid speculation about his travels, Kelce’s father Ed hinted his son could be making the trip to see his talented girlfriend perform on her first Australian tour since 2018.
‘Well, look, we spoke after the Super Bowl, and I asked him, are you going to take off for Sydney, and he seemed keen,’ Ed told the Sydney Morning Herald.
‘He said he’d really like to see Sydney and Singapore , but he wasn’t sure because he has commitments. He is at a celebrity charity golf outing today, which, I think, is in Las Vegas.’
Taylor is currently in Sydney enjoying a few well-earned days off after wowing the 96,000 crowds at Melbourne Cricket Ground last weekend.
She performed three epic sell-out shows at the MCG, also marking the biggest concerts of her entire career as it proved to be a record-breaking start to her tour Down Under.
The Shake It Of hitmaker landed just in Sydney at about 1.30pm on Monday after her flight was delayed 30 minutes due to the severe thunderstorms.
Taylor is now gearing up to perform four shows in Sydney from Friday, February 23 to Monday, February 26, with her boyfriend Travis expected to attend to support her.
Over 300,000 Swifties are expected to flock to Sydney‘s Accor Stadium this weekend for her highly-anticipated Eras Tour concerts.
However, NSW police are encouraging the thousands of concertgoers to plan ahead of the weekend to avoid last minute stress.
Acting Assistant Commissioner Andrew Holland announced ‘extra transport services will be made available this weekend and we encourage concertgoers to utilise them’.
With large crowds expected Acting Assistant Commissioner Holland urged those who don’t have tickets to stay away from the stadium in order to avoid unwanted congestion.
He said: ‘Anti-social behaviour will not be tolerated, and police will act in a fair but firm manner to ensure everyone has a good time but not at the expense of other people’s safety, so take care of one another.’