Air New Zealand might be the only major national carrier in the region where passengers sometimes experience turbulence before the plane even starts taxiing down the Sydney runway.
In the case of the Kiwi airline, this has nothing to do with the fluid motion characterised by the usual changes in pressure and flow velocity one sometimes experiences flying one way or the other over the Tasman Sea. It’s because of the airline’s hard-won reputation for producing some of the world’s most cringiest in-flight safety videos, which some have praised but more often than not ought have had the critics in the back rows reaching for their oxygen masks.
Such was the case earlier in the year with the visiting British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins who later complained about the “cute idea” of invoking Maori deities in a distinctly folksy safety briefing that seemed to suggest passenger safety belonged in the lap of the gods. “Imagine if British Airways announced that their planes are kept aloft by the Holy Ghost in equal partnership with Bernoulli’s Principle and Newton’s First Law,” Hawkins later harrumphed in the Spectator. This effort was as water unto business-class wine, however, compared with quite a few of the others.
Some years ago, for instance, Air New Zealand called on the neon spandex-clad services of a ’80s fitness guru, Richard Simmons, to prance about the interior of a plane decked out as a discotheque for the safety vid. With snakehipped female dancers in leotards and men in day-glo headbands (or was that the other way around?) gyrating in the background, the presenter shrieked away about smoke detectors having been fitted in the toilets and flight attendants knowing what to do an emergency.
Evidently convinced that a slightly risqué approach was the in-flight tonic, the company followed this up with a tumble of similar efforts, including a particularly (yawn) hilarious one featuring an All Black and an old lady running up and down the aisle without any clothes on.
Also on a particularly dire note was the creation of “Rico”, a rodent-like puppet who bleated a strange sort of South American accent about loving NZ’s “hot beeches”, “beating off the native bush track” and other oh-so-edgy innuendos. To the carrier’s credit, Rico was hastily retired in the ensuing hubbub.
Oh, and “the world’s most beautiful safety video”. As shot in the tropical Cook Islands with a slew of extremely lightly dressed Sports Illustrated models (Christie Brinkley, Hannah Davis, Jessica Gomes, Ariel Meredith and Chrissy Teigen) gallivanting along bone-white sands washed by azure seas. Some of us wondered where it might all end.
Indeed, had the pandemic not cut into profits, one half-expected the airline to debut a Martin Scorsese-directed effort shot on handheld cameras. A movie-length epic, perhaps, woven together with the intertwining lives of a group of random travellers brought together during a fateful flight from Wellington to Sydney as they huddled together shielding their eyes from this unalloyed tosh.
“With hints of Fellini, in the telling and the full-throttled drive of the Goodfellas in the execution,” John in 22F might have noted, “this magisterial production reminds me of nothing so much as the amount of time I waited for a top-up on my drink the last time I flew Economy.”
In the past, the corporate taste for these garish productions seemed to be mostly about nabbing media publicity. But more recent efforts have seen the video screen used as what my friend Daniel Norris calls the “wokescreen”, which is to say the conceit that if you play the woke card hard enough everybody’s attention will be diverted from other matters you might prefer them not to dwell upon.
Such was the case with the recent safety clip that so miffed the eminent Professor Dawkins. Indigenous mythologies are all well and good, and obviously in this case were meant to burnish the carrier’s ethnic bona fides — but coincidentally, perhaps, it also debuted at a time when trans-Tasman fares and post-Covid profits happened to be soaring.
Who, then, will have a public word with the corporate leader largely responsible for all of this carry-on? What elected official will remind this person of the solemn responsibility a majority government-owned carrier has not to subject passengers to tsunamis of in-flight tosh?
Alas, the task is not likely to fall to the country’s new captain, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, who until entering national politics in 2020 served for many years as the chief executive of, er, Air New Zealand. On the other hand, perhaps Mr Luxon could be convinced to front the carrier’s next safety video?
David Cohen is a Wellington journalist and frequent flyer.
More Coverage
The reason Emirates’ reward seats are unashamedly expensive
Emirates hasn’t put its airfares on sale since 2017 and has no plan to, as demand for travel shows no sign of cooling.
Emirates puts Boeing, Airbus on notice over aircraft delays
Emirates boss Tim Clark has revealed the frustration in the airline industry over delays in aircraft deliveries, which could open the door to Chinese manufacturer COMAC.