The Evolution of Airline Safety Videos

This holiday season, the 6.4 million Americans traveling by plane will not lack for entertaining content while they taxi to the runway. Many will remain glued to their phones, which may or may not be set to airplane mode. But many others will be compelled—whether because of actual interest, or the frenetic pace of the images parading eight inches in front of their faces—to pay attention to the safety video.

Ever since the introduction of in-flight entertainment screens in the 1980s, airline safety videos have been a quintessential feature of commercial aviation. For most of those years, these videos were virtually indistinguishable from one another: Smiling flight attendants would hit all of the FAA’s mandated talking points, assisted by earnest graphics and demonstrations.