British Airways is hoping to tap into the rising popularity of period dramas with its new safety video, which features real-life cabin crew, pilots, and ground staff and evokes a certain Bridgeton vibe.
The video was originally meant to be released in May, but the grand unveiling had to be scrubbed at the last minute as it was scheduled to take place on the same day that a Singapore Airlines jet flying from London encountered severe turbulence, injuring dozens of those onboard and tragically resulting in the death of one passenger.
The new video comes just over a year after British Airways released its last safety video which featured a slew of British celebrities in a real life aircraft cabin.
The latest video is a visual feast, but does not feature any of the instructions in a real life environment, and at over five minutes for the English-language alone, is on the longer side of what passengers generally find acceptable.
Nonetheless, the video will no doubt be of interest to passengers who don’t regularly fly with British Airways, while frequent flyers will no doubt quickly tire of this quirky nature of the video.
British Airways insists that a video that takes place in a make-believe world that might confuse non-native English speakers is absolutely necessary to capture the attention of passengers.
In contrast, Emirates recently launched its ‘non-nonsense’ safety video that took aim at rivals who have attempted to turn safety videos into marketing gimmicks.
At the very least, British Airways appears to have put a lot more effort into the production quality of this Bridgeton-esque safety video. What do you think?
It’s an improvement on the last one, but that’s not saying much, because the last one was lamentable. What I would ask BA is: if you put their new one up next to the new one from Emirates, which airline appears to be taking safety more seriously?