“Greetings from the cockpit. That is your captain speaking.”
It’s a phrase frequent flyers know well.
Only this isn’t a pilot. And what follows isn’t the identical ol’ in-flight safety talk.
Moderately, it’s the opening salvo of a now viral YouTube video from travel journalist Doug Lansky, who delivers a near 7-minute “honest pre-flight safety demonstration … that airlines are afraid to point out you.”
The tongue-in-cheek video has racked up 8.4 million views, a powerful achievement for a fake version of a security briefing that almost all travelers ignore.
Lansky said he was inspired by a discussion he had with a pilot he sat next to on a flight years ago.
When the security demonstration video began, “I noticed he wasn’t being attentive to it. And in case you travel lots, no person really does,” said Lansky. “So I said ‘What would you say, in case you could say anything?’ And he rattled off a bunch of stuff.”
Lansky said he then posed the identical query to others within the aviation industry.
The video, he said, is “a composite of those different conversations I’ve had with pilots over time — what would they are saying in the event that they could do the security test, they usually weren’t certain by the legal team of the airline?”
Keeping it ‘real’
The premise of the video is that the aircraft’s entertainment system is down (“so we are able to’t show you the $2 million safety video that an ad agency did for us”), and thus the pilot goes to deliver a “real safety talk” to passengers.
The video advises passengers to practice unbuckling their seatbelt (“I do know you all know learn how to use it but that’s since you’re not losing your sh*t without delay”). Lansky said that research shows that when persons are panicking — say they’re the other way up or in a smoke-filled cabin — they have a tendency to press the seatbelt buckle, as if it had a button like a automotive seatbelt.
“You really want to form of visualize actually lifting the flap,” Lansky told CNBC Travel. “You wish that muscle memory, and most of us have that more with a automotive than with an airplane.”
The video also stresses to passengers that they need to leave their bags on the plane within the event of an emergency evacuation.
“Within the event of something like an engine fire, we want you all off the plane in about 90 seconds,” it states. “My first officer and I can even be attempting to get off this plane, and the final thing we wish is to be cock-pit blocked by your roll-on.”
As as to whether the crew shall be working to maximise your time to maneuver in regards to the cabin — don’t bet on it, the video advised.
“We’ll probably keep the seatbelt sign on for nearly the whole flight because our flight crew doesn’t wish to be bothered within the galley,” it states.
Is that this true? “Oh yes,” a U.S. flight attendant with greater than 20 years of experience told CNBC Travel.
“Especially during [food or drink] service,” she said. “Or when someone decides to come back stand over you and chat when you’re eating. It’s funny — people act lots in another way on the airplane than they do in normal life.” She asked to stay anonymous because her employer advises against making public statements to media outlets.
To make the video, Lansky said he spoke with many within the aviation industry and conducted his own research, leaning on his 20 years of experience as a travel journalist.
Source: Doug Lansky
And people life jackets under your seat? “Ignore it,” advises the video. “They’re less likely to save lots of your life than those little airline pillows.”
But here’s where our fake pilot may go a step too far, said a primary officer for a significant U.S. airline who asked to stay anonymous because he also will not be authorized to talk to media.
He said the video is “definitely written by someone who knows the ins and outs of airline flying,” but that he doesn’t agree with dismissing life jackets.
As for the accuracy of the video’s advice, most of it’s true, the primary captain said.
“But you’d obviously never really hear it from a flight crew,” he added.
Researching in-flight injuries
Lansky said he got here across some astounding figures while researching the statistics cited within the video.
For instance, passengers are likely to worry about crashes and severe turbulence, but statistically they’re rather more more likely to be injured by their very own luggage, he said.
“Through the years, more people have been hurt, by far, from their very own duty-free bottles falling out of the overhead compartment and whacking them on the pinnacle … after they’ve landed, than any form of turbulence,” he said.
“That’s awesome!” a flight attendant told CNBC Travel, after viewing Lansky’s now viral video.
Enviromantic | E+ | Getty Images
The drink cart is one other improbable source of injury, Lansky said, adding that flight attendants told him they repeatedly hit passengers whose body parts encroach on the aisle.
He said he asked flight attendants how persistently they bump passengers elbows, knees and feet on long-haul flights.
Essentially the most common answer? About 20, he said.
“That was asking about 20 or 30 different flight attendants,” he said. “They do not break knees or elbows or wrists every time, but they bump into that many individuals per flight.”
Views come ‘in waves’
The video wasn’t an fast success, said Lansky, who posted it about 4 years ago.
“It form of went in waves,” he said. “After I first put it online, it had like 200 views for a pair months, after which any individual found it, and it went bananas.”
Doug Lansky is a journalist, creator and speaker about travel and sustainable tourism.
Source: Doug Lansky
Lansky said he’s an enormous fan of “The Every day Show,” “Late Night with Seth Meyers” and other evening political shows because “they cut thru the BS and keep things entertaining, intelligent and real.” Shows like those shape the travel industry commentary he provides on his YouTube channel “ReThinking Tourism,” he said.
The viral video brought attention to Lansky’s profession, which now focuses on tourism consulting and conference speaking but, he said, its success has hit closer to home for him. As a verifiable YouTuber, with a viral video, he won newfound respect from his daughter, he said.
“My teenage daughter was giving me a tough time for attempting to do something on YouTube,” he said. But when the video reached 2 million views, “her chin hit the ground.”
“That was the perfect thing that got here out of it.”
