Safety video or marketing ploy

Yet, without wishing to rag on the Red Roo, and with the acknowledgement that Virgin Australia’s December “Safety and Supercars” briefing video falls foul of some — but fewer — of these problems too, several issues were striking on watching.

From a tourism marketing standpoint, it’s all very well to show “St Kilda Pier: VIC” or “Hunter Valley: NSW”, and most readers of Australian Aviation could point to them on a Jeppesen chart, let alone a map, but to what extent do international passengers — many of whom, especially in growth regions, will have a limited grasp of English — know where St Kilda or the Hunter Valley are, let alone that VIC and NSW are states, or where they are in comparison with the airport they’re flying to? Qantas could usefully provide more information, perhaps with more information advertised as appearing in the Qantas magazine, or on the inflight entertainment system.

But practically, the real point of safety videos is safety. This bar has been set relatively low recently, not least because of the growth in using these videos viral advertising and partner onboard marketing tools. But these videos are a crucial part of ensuring passengers survive emergencies in the aircraft, and the industry would do well to reexamine its balance choices and avoid turning safety communications into an advert.

In terms of today’s ever-shortening attention span, Qantas’ video is very long, with the marketing-focussed web version coming in at 6m21s, while the A380 version Qantas provided to Australian Aviation clocks in at 4m33s, despite its press release saying the video is three minutes. Four and a half minutes is very long for a safety video, and there are questions in the age of increasingly short attention spans about whether boredom will set in. By contrast, Air New Zealand’s 2009 Bare Essentials of Safety video, one of the first of the current generation of catchy safety briefings, runs only 3m28s.

Within the briefing, there are numerous issues one would hope the airline’s experts or the certifying authorities might have categorised as unwise. Again, these are not unique to Qantas, but walking through the latest video serves to illustrate the range of issues that could use a rethink.

The window-washer at the top of the Q1 building in Surfers Paradise demonstrates seat belts, but he is wearing at least a dozen piece of webbing of the exact same colour as the seatbelt, and with entirely different clasps. Yes, the old chestnut joke about people not knowing how to do up a seatbelt is good for a laugh, but passengers are flying who have never flown before, these belts do work differently than in cars, there is research showing that undoing belts delays evacuations, and if we’re going to mandate the inclusion of this information it should be unequivocal.

The location of life jackets, too, could be much clearer — three options are given in quick succession, but none are specified for cabin of service or type of seat.

Demonstrating the brace position through the medium of interpretive dance using dining chairs may be entertaining, but is not particularly helpful when “if you can reach the seat in front” is spoken when the dancers cannot reach that seat.

Having “lights will guide you to your exit” spoken over the Field of Light at Uluru is a beautiful shot, but the safety message is not clear. How is a window passenger to see over two neighbours to the lights? This should surely be shown on the video.

The demonstration of evacuating via the slide is a big problem, with a father sitting down on a sand dune, hugging his son, and sliding down with arms trailing behind him. In an emergency, that could seriously hurt or kill a child, injure the passenger’s arms, and interfere with other passengers’ evacuation.

The demonstration of evacuating via the slide is a big problem.

The “No smoking” section doesn’t show either a cigarette or e-cigarette alongside the spinning fire-dancers on Mindil Beach. This lack of showing as well as speaking is an issue throughout the safety video.

It appears that it is time for Australian regulators to step up, take responsibility and make changes in order to ensure that airlines adequately inform their ever-diversifying mixture of passengers about onboard safety.