Top 5 Wackiest Airline Safety Presentations
How can an airline safety presentation best compete with smartphones and tablets during pre-flight takeoff?
It can’t. But that hasn’t stopped everyone from Virgin America to Air New Zealand from attempting to pull passengers’ attention away from their screens long enough to impart the requisite safety information.
In their efforts to make safety presentations more exciting, major airlines are resorting to just about anything – sex jokes, choreographed dance numbers, even naked streaking grandmothers – to prep distracted passengers for their flights.
Here are the top 5 wackiest and weirdest airline safety videos to watch out for the next time you fly:
1. Air New Zealand: “Crazy About Rugby”
Air New Zealand’s “Crazy About Rugby” in-flight video features that sport’s most famous players on board an aircraft surrounded by face-painted superfans.
In the video, male flight attendants physically lift up an elderly woman so she can stow a framed photograph of a buff rugby player in the overhead compartment.
A coach cautions passengers to always wear their seatlbelts, unless there’s a need to “stretch your hammies.”
A starstruck woman uses her oxygen mask to combat the lightheadedness that’s resulted from being surrounded by all the sexy rugby players.
The video is cute and mildly funny, and gives non-Kiwi viewers a crash course in New Zealand-ese.
But it’s the ending that really makes this video worth watching.
I won’t give it away entirely, but let’s just say that nudity is not off limits for Air New Zealand: not even when it comes to little old ladies.
2. Virgin America: “Safety Dance”
Virgin America’s “Safety Dance” video is a microcosm of the Virgin brand itself: larger than life, better than you expected, a positively epic, three-dimensional in-flight experience.
The full-length video is an homage to American pop culture, and features rapping children, a contortionist, various flight attendants “crunking,” and a Beyonce sound-a-like backed up by some astoundingly good-looking co-stars.
3. Delta’s Latest: Subtle Humor
Delta can’t go quite as nuts as some of the other airlines – it’s got a business travel rep to protect. But that didn’t stop the company from getting into the safety video game using a more subtle approach.At first glance, Delta’s safety video appears to be a typical, boring safety presentation given by a pretty-but-bland female flight attendant.
But if you watch closely, you’ll begin to see the strangest array of cutaway shots: a pizza man stowing a freshly baked pie in the overhead compartment, a burly muscle man cooing to his tiny dog, a woman baking with an electronic mixer on her tray table, and a man with brightly-painted fingernails adjusting his seat-belt.
Perhaps most bizarre is a scene in which redheaded male triplets refuse to sit in the exit row, answering the “Are you willing to help?” question with a decisive, unified “no!”
Delta’s attempt at funny doesn’t quite make the grade (change that horrid music, Delta! And speed things up, comedy is funnier when it’s fast!), but the video is definitely wacky, if not a bit bizarre.
4. Air Asia: Too Sexy
“Your life vest is under your seat.”
“Underwear?”
“Under your seat.”
And so it continues – an entire safety presentation that consists of 4th grade-style sex jokes and endless opportunities to snicker.
Opportunities like “Pull on the waistband until it’s tight. Tight.”
It doesn’t hurt that all Air Asia flight attendants are drop dead gorgeous either. Maybe that’s why the simplest quip about saving “yourself before you boyfriend” is enough to inspire guffaws of laughter in this funny, if slightly random, Air Asia safety presentation.
5. Southwest Airlines: Martha Cobb, Queen of Comedy
There’s a reason this homemade video of a real Southwest flight attendant’s safety presentation has received over 10 million views on Youtube – it’s hilarious!
Martha Cobb is an actual Southwest employee who catapulted into Internet stardom when passengers filmed her in-flight safety speech.
The presentation is pure standup, with fiery-tongue Cobb delivering one-liners a mile a minute. She almost sounds like a comedic auctioneer, pausing for the laughs in just the right places.
Her best gems include:
“If you’d like to use your oxygen mask, simply insert 75 cents for the first minute.”
“You’ll be getting lots and lots of gin – oxygen that is.”
“If you’re travelling with small children – we’re sorry.”
“Sit back and relax – or sit up and be tense, it’s up to you.”
The thunderous applause that follows her performance is well-earned, as were her invitations to appear on Ellen and The Today Show after the video went viral.
See all Top 5 wacky airline safety presentation videos on The Wise Traveller YouTube Channel
Which wacky airline safety videos have we missed?
Have you enjoyed fun safety presentations on any recent flights? Which airline did you fly?
Rebekah Voss is an author, travel writer, and the creator of www.TheHappyPassport.com
