Could Those Entertaining Airline Safety Videos Be Making Flights Riskier?
Airline safety videos aren’t the same old boring clips anymore. Over the past decade, they’ve turned into mini-productions, complete with celebrities, animation, and chart-topping soundtracks. They rack up millions of views online and double as marketing campaigns, but the real question is whether passengers are actually paying more attention to the instructions or just enjoying the show.
The Era of Theatrical Safety Briefings
Image via Unsplash/Gus Ruballo
The shift to more creative safety videos started around 2007, when Virgin America launched a campaign to make flying fun again. Their playful, animated safety video went viral, and other airlines quickly followed.
Soon, the once-serious briefings were directed by Hollywood names and featured celebrities like Gordon Ramsay, Thandie Newton, and Sir Ian McKellen. Airlines began creating videos that were more entertainment than safety instructions.
The video for United Airlines, Safety in Motion, took ten months to make. It involved over 1,000 real dominoes and a production crew of 160 people.
One video for Air New Zealand, It’s Kiwi Safety, is estimated to have cost over $2.5 million. The videos are not cheap, but airlines have a good reason for making them. They get millions of views on YouTube and other social platforms, which is excellent for brand loyalty.
A researcher analyzed over 113 airline safety videos from the last thirty years and found two clear trends since 2011: videos are increasingly filmed outside the plane, and they feature celebrities much more often. They are now filmed on beaches, basketball courts, and symphony halls, usually doubling as tourism ads.
These videos can provide an airline with a lot of marketing value. One consultant noted that they can be more cost-effective than traditional advertising, especially for smaller airlines that can’t afford a huge billboard at an airport.
Numbers Don’t Match Effect
With all the money and effort going into these productions, a few academics have questioned their effectiveness. Are passengers actually remembering the critical information?
In a study from the University of New South Wales, 82 participants watched three different safety videos: a standard briefing, a humorous one with dancing, and a movie-themed one. The more entertaining the video, the worse people were at recalling the safety instructions.
The people who saw the standard video could recall 53% of the information. In contrast, those who watched the movie-themed video recalled only 47%, and the humorous video group recalled just 35%.
Another study, this one from Penn State University, reinforced this idea. Researchers found that people who watched a safety video with tourism content were 11% less likely to correctly answer a quiz on safety procedures.
This is a big problem because the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) says that knowing what to do in a crash situation is vital to a person’s survival. The NTSB found that between 1983 and 2000, 95.7% of passengers in airline accidents survived. Passenger education is a key part of that high survival rate.
A Matter of Balance
Image via Unsplash/Tim Dennert
Not every airline has joined this trend. Emirates, for example, has a no-nonsense safety video. In its description, the airline stated that if you want dancers and movie stars, you will find them in the in-flight entertainment. They make it clear they take your safety seriously and keep their videos refreshed and to the point.
Ultimately, the issue comes down to balancing fun and function. These videos are successful at getting our attention and building a brand. But in doing so, they may be pulling our focus away from the main reason for their existence, which is our safety. The core of the matter is that, regardless of how entertaining the video is, it is always worth paying close attention. Those few minutes could make all the difference.