Air New Zealand's new in-flight safety video has been loudly criticised this week for its swimsuit-clad models and its overseas setting. It faces charges of sexualising women and promoting a destination - Aitutaki in the Cook Islands - other than our own.
Valid as these criticisms are, they relate to the word video, not to the other pertinent word: safety.
The more glamorous and elaborate these safety videos become, the less effective, surely, they are in communicating the essential aircraft safety messages.
Who now can bear to watch that Lord of the Rings safety video with the hairy feet and various bearded and pointy-eared characters? It was good the first time. Maybe the second. But, give us all a break, Captain, from enduring it again and again. That particular version even seems to have come back, on the cheap, for repeats when the new Hobbit movie was released recently.
Yes, yes, we all smiled at Richard Simmonds. Once. And at the body-painted crew. And the All Blacks, even. But this is the problem with gimmicks: They quickly wear out their welcome. Just try enduring Graham Henry every week on a return flight to Wellington.
