Virgin America Gets Cheeky with 5-Hour Flight Video

Virgin America prides itself on being a nontraditional airline, a characteristic that bleeds into its marketing strategy.

The airline this week uploaded a 5-hour 46-minute video to YouTube that traces the supposed real-time events on a flight from Newark to San Francisco.

The airline, the flight, and its passengers; however, are all fake.

The video is a playful way to poke fun at the much-complained-about experiences that travelers endure on some domestic flights. Although the airline wouldn't share the costs of producing the spoof, it is evident from the video that they were not high.

This isn't the first time that Virgin America has used a video to mess with consumers' marketing expectations. It released a video in March  where Richard Branson, who owns a minority stake in the airline, teased that flyers would soon be able to create personal climate-controlled environments using the Nest thermostat.

The average video uploaded to YouTube by an airline lasts approximately three minutes, according to SkiftIQ. If you're bored, the full Virgin America video is embedded below: