Air NZ Cabin Crew On the Shame Of THAT Safety Video

Watch the video. Then watch it again, and then watch it twice a day for the next month. Imagine, as you do so, a metal tube full of hundreds of people eager to get to home for Christmas whose animosity towards what they’re watching morphs in their minds into animosity for the nearest representative of the company forcing them to do so: you.

This, approximately, is what it’s like to be an Air New Zealand flight attendant as the much-maligned “It’s Kiwi Safety” plays at the beginning of every flight.

“It does give us great marketing cut-through,” Air NZ’s head of global brand and content marketing, Jodi Williams, said when the video was released. “It’s not just about New Zealand but it also enables us to stand out globally.”

Standing out, while standing in front of their passengers, is exactly what a range of Air New Zealand flight attendants—speaking anonymously—told VICE was the problem. “I want to die of embarrassment,” one said. “It makes me feel like an absolute moron,” said another. “Avoid any eye contact, and just concentrate on what you need to get from the supermarket,” was one method of getting through the safety video. “When I’m standing there and it starts playing,” said another flight attendant, “we have to stand there for about four minutes in front of all the passengers and I can feel them watching me, looking at me as if I’m to blame for this monstrosity.”

As you sit there, silent blame radiating, flight attendants are using that time to assess passengers—who might be a problem, who could help in an emergency. Because of this video, one attendant told VICE, they no longer want to even make eye contact with their passengers as they go through this process. “It’s putting me off the job I have to do in that moment. It’s embarrassing. When they say this awful line, ‘Yo crew, show them where the exits at!’ I turn and pause and look at the crew member who is behind me and we both share this look of disgust as we’re pointing to the doors. It’s like, hurry up, let’s sit down.”

“First and foremost,” Williams said, “safety is paramount—what we’ve been able to prove that by doing these different safety demonstrations people are paying more attention.”

Not so, says a source. “Yesterday a woman was complaining that she hadn’t even seen the safety demo. All she watched was a music video. An elderly lady who had no idea it was a safety video. She just thought it was something that came up on the screen. The message isn’t getting through to the customer.”

If the video fails at this most basic task, however, in the parlance of boardroom corporate-speak, it has still been pitched as a success. “[Management says] people are talking about it so they’ve already succeeded.” That’s a measure of success, of course, that means even this article could be counted towards it. Our source, however, doesn’t buy that. “I don’t believe it at all.”