This article first appeared in The Edge Malaysia Weekly on November 20, 2023 - November 26, 2023

I recently had to catch an early morning flight after pulling an all-nighter to meet a deadline. I was so tired that I passed out soon after settling into my seat on the plane. This was a mistake.

The next thing I remember   was waking up to see a flight attendant serving the pre-arrival breakfast.

I asked, “What happened to the pre-flight safety demonstration?”

“The in-flight safety video has already been played,” responded the attendant.

Oh my gosh. Clearly, I’d slept through the in-flight safety briefing. Presumably, the cabin crew assumed that I’d rather be snoozing when they saw me blissfully snoring away with my mouth open before take-off and did not bother to wake me up.

I wish they had. Though it wasn’t my first time flying, I struggled to recall the safety procedures in an emergency from previous trips. Where’s the exit closest to me? Is my life jacket actually under my seat? In an emergency, do I inflate my life vest in the cabin or wait until we’re outside the plane? Fortunately, it was a relatively short flight.

So, on my return flight, I made sure not to doze off during the pre-flight safety video. I was rewarded with perhaps one of the most elegant in-flight safety videos yet.

Titled “Safety inflight video”, it featured a flight attendant with the grace of a beauty pageant contestant, against a backdrop of some of the country’s most beautiful attractions. The video took her and viewers beyond the confines of a regular aircraft cabin to, among others, a boat with a couple demonstrating how to put on the seat belts, and then to a back alley with a man and a boy showing how to put on the oxygen masks, with the circumstances of how the masks had fallen from the sky remaining a mystery.

The clip then proceeded to show a man and a girl at what looked like a water park demonstrating how to wear a life vest, before we headed to a theatre where a man showed us where we could find the life vest under our seats. 

The video joins a list of creative and innovative in-flight safety videos that airlines have come up with in recent years as they try hard to hold passengers’ attention. These videos also double as promotional material for some airlines. 

There are airlines that turn their safety announcements into music videos that star their own flight attendants belting out a safety song, along with popular artists, while others have chosen to inject humour into their videos. Some also use animation.

Still, not everyone is a fan of these videos. Sure, they normally captivate the intended viewers the first time around, but not when they are viewed repeatedly every time one flies on the same airline. 

“Please tell the airline to stop singing about safety. It has become too loud,” said a company director, who was commenting on an airline’s seven-minute video.

The truth is that some of these safety videos have become too long, which causes people to tune out.

I would be the first to admit that these new safety videos aren’t for me. While it is fun to see them for the first time, the fact remains that the standard pre-flight safety videos, with a narrator and demonstration of safety procedures, are more effective, especially for those flying for the first time — or the first time in a long while. They may be dull, but it helps to know where the life vests can be found and that the emergency oxygen masks will automatically fall from the cabin ceiling in the event of a drop in cabin pressure.

Never mind passengers who don’t pay attention to flight safety demos; you still have people who do, especially those travelling with elderly parents and children. 

I honestly do want you to show me the nearest emergency exits on a particular aircraft. While the illustration of the eight exits looks cute, it is more important to point out their location.

And yes, it is not your duty to help me lift my luggage onto the overhead bin and it’s okay if you serve me water instead of juice; just show me how to save my life during an in-flight emergency and how to stop someone from opening a plane door mid-flight.

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