BY ROGER WATSON
When did airline safety videos become a vanity project for bored marketing graduates? It appears Virgin America inflicted the first “quirky” animated briefing upon an unsuspecting public in 2007. Air New Zealand then lowered the bar to subterranean levels in 2009 by stripping off their staff and covering them in body paint. Now, every carrier with a spare pot of cash has joined the circus, presumably because someone decided that safety information should be as forgettable as a reality TV reunion special.
There was a time, children, when cabin crew stood in the aisle, visibly bored out of their minds, demonstrating a seatbelt while pointing vaguely at exits. Few watched. It was honest, efficient, and refreshingly free of ego. Then some bright spark in a boardroom had a “brainwave”—probably after a third gin and tonic—and decided that what passengers really needed was a succession of rugby players, hobbits, wizards, supermodels, fitness gurus, and assorted Z-list “national treasures,” all smirking their way through instructions on where to find a life jacket. Because if Gareth from the All Blacks can’t make you remember the brace position, who can?
The granddaddy of cringe was, of course, the infamous Air New Zealand effort featuring the New Zealand rugby squad. Watch it here if you have a high tolerance for grown men pretending to care about oxygen masks while desperately trying to look “funny.” British Airways, never ones to let a good bandwagon roll past without hurling themselves under it, are now on their third generation of these celebrity-laden turkeys—each one less amusing than the last, like a sketch show that was cancelled after the first ad break.
Their most recent masterpiece features the delectable Emma Raducanu putting her own bag in the overhead locker. In Economy, no less. Stop the presses. Comedy gold. I nearly choked on my in-flight pretzel. Their latest offering is performed in period costume, “inspired by Britain’s famous literature,” and begins with “may we haveth one’s attention.” One is simply grateful they still provideth sick bags, because one is feeling decidedly queasy.
My beloved Cathay Pacific—once a bastion of dignified restraint—have also got in on the act. At least theirs are mercifully free of celebrities and, as far as I can tell, are not attempting to be funny. Which is just as well, because they fail at comedy by not even attempting it. Instead, they’ve produced a video that features precisely zero aircraft interiors. Not one. It’s like a safety briefing for a holiday brochure.
I have just flown with Qatar Airways, and even they have succumbed to the plague, with their Buckle Up video featuring Kevin Hart (who? Exactly—some American chap who shouts a lot). This gem follows the Dua-e-Safar (travel prayer) with Hart pratfalling across various glamorous destinations—subliminally selling you a stopover while vaguely waving at “safety features.” Not a single aircraft makes an appearance. It’s a travel advert with a life-jacket cameo, and about as useful as a chocolate fireguard in a hurricane.
Now, despite the millions squandered on these increasingly elaborate, celebrity-stuffed, supposedly comedic productions, there is precisely zero compelling evidence that they save a single soul. The limited research—and let’s be generous and call it “research”—suggests that humour might improve short-term recall, but only if you find Kevin Hart funny, which assumes a level of brain damage I’m not prepared to diagnose. Celebrities might help, but only if you actually know who they are—and I’m still trying to work out who half these “stars” are supposed to be.
Crucially, no study has ever demonstrated that a passenger in a real emergency thinks, “Ah yes, Emma Raducanu’s handbag—now I remember the brace position.” In fact, we apparently recall only about half the key safety messages, regardless of whether they’re delivered by a wizard, a hobbit, or a bored stewardess with a bad hairdo. So what are we paying for? Exactly: branding. Marketing. Destination porn. Safety is merely the alibi.
Worse still, this “bells and whistles” approach risks cognitive overload—especially for passengers on the autism spectrum, for whom a comedian pratfalling through a safety demo is about as helpful as a nun at a strip club. And then there’s “authority dilution”—a fancy term for the blindingly obvious fact that if a celebrity is joking about the exit row, your brain quite reasonably assumes the whole thing is a pantomime. Which, let’s face it, it is. The serious messages get lost in a fog of ego and cheap gags.
The mind fairly boggles as to where this trend might take us next. Taylor Swift could sing one—preferably in a key that makes you want to jump out of the emergency exit. Bill Nighy could pour his trademark scorn on the entire enterprise, which would at least be honest. David Hockney could paint one—oh, too late, I’m sure someone’s already commissioned him. One thing is certain: as long as these videos serve as glorified branding exercises and destination promos, they’ll keep coming. Safety is the pretext; viral is the goal.
I have only ever endured one airline emergency—an unscheduled landing with Cathay Pacific in Wuhan. We were over terra cotta (John Prescott could have done that one, and frankly, he’d have been more useful than most of these celebs), so we didn’t get to test the life jackets. I’ve often wondered how effective that little light and whistle would be in a tropical storm in the North Atlantic. If my plane is about to ditch in freezing swells, I don’t want to remember a punchline, a rugby player, or a cameo from Jumanji. I want to remember the nearest exit. I want to remember the brace position. I want to remember that my life depends on paying attention—not on whether I recognised the face on the screen.
The only performance required of a safety briefing is to keep us alive. Its first duty is not to go viral. It is not to win an Emmy. It is not to make us chuckle weakly while sipping overpriced champagne. It is to prepare us for the one occasion we desperately hope never comes. And if that means watching a bored steward point at a door with all the enthusiasm of a man heading to the gallows, I’ll take that over a hobbit, a wizard, and Kevin Hart’s ego any day. Now pass the sick bag—I think I’m going to need it.
Roger Watson is a Registered Nurse and Editor-in-Chief of Nurse Education in Practice.