And remember, they might be behind you.

January 28, 2014 10:56 AM

Delta's safety instructions have gone 1980's style (SLYT)
posted by roomthreeseventeen (39 comments total)

I liked the WiFi joke, and the "finger-wagging flight attendant would have been a kid in the 80s" joke. But it seems like these jokey safety instruction videos would get really tiresome if you flew more than a few times a year. They seem made for YouTube.

Okay, the Airplane! joke at the end is good, too.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 11:04 AM on January 28, 2014 [1 favorite]

No smoking? How '80's is that?
posted by MtDewd at 11:07 AM on January 28, 2014

Not sure, but maybe they're making fun of Virgin's finger waggling kid?

They also are doing the same "worm dancing down the isle" thing from the virgin video, I think.
posted by rlio at 11:11 AM on January 28, 2014

WHAT YEAR IS THIS
posted by jquinby at 11:11 AM on January 28, 2014

rlio: The finger wagging is a reference to this earlier Delta safety instruction video.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 11:14 AM on January 28, 2014 [4 favorites]

This is a big step as before going on a Delta flight was an unintentional visit to the 1980s.
posted by The Whelk at 11:18 AM on January 28, 2014 [21 favorites]

Coincidentally, I was just reading an Ian Bogost book where he used airplane safety videos as an example of how it's much easier to get people to pay attention to the presentation method than to get them to remember the actual safety information. (The most effective for the latter would be more akin to doing fire drill, but I can see that might be impractical to do every time you fly.)
posted by RobotHero at 11:18 AM on January 28, 2014

Did she just say "carrion items"?
posted by Sys Rq at 11:20 AM on January 28, 2014 [1 favorite]

Remember ALF? He's back! In Pog airline instructional video form!
posted by Rangeboy at 11:21 AM on January 28, 2014 [8 favorites]

One of my favorite moments, flying, was one time when an attendant, who was obviously bored, said, "Now, for those of you who have not been in a car since 1961, here's how to buckle and unbuckle a seat belt."
posted by Danf at 11:22 AM on January 28, 2014 [9 favorites]

I flew Delta over Christmas, and they had a special Christmas edition, featuring Santa, elves, etc. It was actually a pretty good way to get people to pay attention to the video.
posted by zug at 11:33 AM on January 28, 2014 [2 favorites]

I liked the Devo energy dome. Was that a band member wearing it? I'm not really up on what the Devo guys look like now.
posted by JHarris at 11:33 AM on January 28, 2014 [3 favorites]

The comments suggest it's Jerry Casale.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 11:34 AM on January 28, 2014 [4 favorites]

I was hoping to see someone bust out a Compaq Portable
posted by Pruitt-Igoe at 11:34 AM on January 28, 2014 [5 favorites]

That was indeed Jerry Casale of Devo.
posted by stenseng at 11:34 AM on January 28, 2014 [5 favorites]

I watched the whole thing. That's gotta mean something.
posted by wittgenstein at 11:34 AM on January 28, 2014 [3 favorites]

It's the eighties! Do a lot of coke and vote for Ronald Reagan!
posted by JHarris at 11:38 AM on January 28, 2014 [6 favorites]

I love how the guy's yellow and white striped headband keeps changing, and his hair changes a couple of times too. They really should have made him have a Jheri curl and had his headband slowly get soaked with activator.
posted by cashman at 11:38 AM on January 28, 2014

danf, another safety speech I liked included the line "...and if you are traveling with two small children, decide now which one you love more." (Either JetBlue or Southwest, both of which seem to encourage ad-libbing).
posted by straw at 11:56 AM on January 28, 2014 [4 favorites]

But it seems like these jokey safety instruction videos would get really tiresome if you flew more than a few times a year.

Eh, not any more than the regular ones, I imagine. If you fly on a regular basis, you probably know it all anyway and are used to napping through them.

On the other hand, I've seen the animated Virgin one a million times and I'm still charmed by it.
posted by insufficient data at 12:31 PM on January 28, 2014 [1 favorite]

I totally didn't see the gorilla.
posted by Smedleyman at 12:31 PM on January 28, 2014 [3 favorites]

They couldn't afford a Drew Barrymore cameo?
posted by Smart Dalek at 1:05 PM on January 28, 2014 [2 favorites]

This kind of reminds me of my reaction to Hot Tub Time Machine, which was: "So that's what watching Back To The Future must have felt like for people who actually lived through the Fifties."
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 1:21 PM on January 28, 2014 [6 favorites]

Oh come on, this doesn't hold a candle to ANY of Air New Zealand's inflight videos!

Fly, you fools!
posted by scolbath at 1:24 PM on January 28, 2014 [5 favorites]

As long as Delta isn't featuring that unheimlich redhead they used to use. She came straight from the uncanny valley.
posted by wotsac at 1:45 PM on January 28, 2014

scolbath: "Oh come on, this doesn't hold a candle to ANY of Air New Zealand's inflight videos !

Fly, you fools!"

Maybe it's because I grew up around Northwest Orient, but holy moly, that short has some massive production quality.

I'm still sticking with Korean Air.
posted by Sphinx at 1:48 PM on January 28, 2014

> Either JetBlue or Southwest, both of which seem to encourage ad-libbing

On Southwest or some similar cheap-o airline I once heard "In the unlikely event of a water landing, or a pool party..."
posted by The corpse in the library at 1:51 PM on January 28, 2014 [1 favorite]

Either JetBlue or Southwest, both of which seem to encourage ad-libbing

Westjet does this in Canada. I have heard as a preface to the safety spiel, "If we could have your undivided attention for the next few minutes we would be greatly appreciative but mostly shocked," and on descent, "Ladies and gentlemen, the captain has dimmed the cabin lights to improve the appearance of the cabin crew..."
posted by ricochet biscuit at 2:03 PM on January 28, 2014 [2 favorites]

This has nothing on the Bangkok Airlines safety video. The dancing! The outfits!
posted by wingless_angel at 2:18 PM on January 28, 2014

The Men Without Hats reference at 2:15 elevated this from 'pretty great' to 'totally tubular.'
posted by prinado at 2:20 PM on January 28, 2014 [4 favorites]

Yyyyyyy fyyyyy????
posted by littlesq at 3:16 PM on January 28, 2014

Either I'm too much of a folk music nerd, or I've been watching too many episodes of "Seconds from Disaster" and "Air Crash Investigation", but all I could think while watching this was "Man, I WISH we'd had some of these safety features on planes in the 80s. Stan Rogers might still be alive."
posted by offalark at 3:29 PM on January 28, 2014

I'd just flown twice on Delta a month ago, and the reference to Freaky Winking No Smoking Finger Wag Lady absolutely slew me. This was actually pretty entertaining.
posted by DoctorFedora at 4:28 PM on January 28, 2014 [1 favorite]

Speaking of '80s music, here's a Pop-Up Video version of that previous safety video. "Deltalina"?
posted by DoctorFedora at 4:33 PM on January 28, 2014 [1 favorite]

And here's that Christmas version.
posted by DoctorFedora at 4:38 PM on January 28, 2014 [2 favorites]

This and the previous Delta one were pretty darn funny. I didn’t get tired of the previous one because I kept noticing how they changed little things like clothing throughout.

Southwest used to do all kinds of funny live ad lib presentations, but I haven’t seen that lately.
posted by bongo_x at 5:31 PM on January 28, 2014

Surprise, Deltalina is on Wikipedia (fully sourced).
posted by dhartung at 10:53 PM on January 28, 2014 [1 favorite]

To this day I can do the Delta MD-80 version of "There are three exits on this plane, two forward, one rear, four window exits over the wings, and an additional exit at the back of the aircraft." Including the hand motions. Flying twice a week will do weird things to you.
posted by ob1quixote at 12:54 AM on January 29, 2014

On Southwest or some similar cheap-o airline I once heard "In the unlikely event of a water landing, or a pool party..."

I got one. As soon as the plane hit the gate on arrival, one of the FAs got on the speaker and said "All rise!" a la a courtroom, just as everyone jumped into the aisle and stood up. A Delta flight, if I'm not mistaken. I thought it was pretty funny, myself.
posted by jquinby at 6:45 PM on January 30, 2014 [3 favorites]