A Strange Thing Is Happening in Airline Safety Videos

For an article in the Hustle, Shikhar Sachdev sat through hundreds of airline safety videos. If this sounds like excruciating torture, it's possible you're not clued into a strange phenomenon in this industry niche: Airlines these days aren't making mere safety tutorials, writes Sachdev. Instead, they are "engaging in an arms race to make their safety videos bigger, better, and frankly: more ridiculous." Consider that a British Airways video from 2024 titled "May We Haveth One's Attention" was directed by Sharon Maguire of Bridget Jones's Diary fame, features costumes by Oscar winner Jenny Beavan, and shows up on the movie database site IMDB.

Sachdev traces the evolution of such videos, which got a kickstart in 2007 with an animated Virgin America entry. Flash forward to today, and airline safety videos now routinely feature celebrities and big budgets—and, strangely, they typically take place nowhere near an airplane itself. While it may seem like a frivolous waste of money at a time when airlines are cutting corners, the cost is typically justified as another form of marketing. Note that the justification does not include improving passengers' knowledge of safety: An Australian professor who studied the genre found that the more entertaining the video, the less viewers were able to retain the safety information being imparted. "Our brain can only take so much information at a particular time," he explains. (Read the full story.)