Why Southwest Air Skips the Safety Videos in Favor of Free-Styling Flight Attendants

The safety trend today for airlines is increasingly creative and engaging pre-flight videos, intended to grab passengers' attention. These videos are also an excellent marketing opportunity for airlines, not just to promote their brand but also, often, to encourage tourism to their country of origin. While all of these successful viral videos are carefully scripted and staged, the original trend-buckers at Southwest Airlines allow their flight attendants to go off-script: cracking jokes, singing, and doing whatever it takes to get passengers to pay attention. This unique approach has had positive results both on the aircraft, where the passengers enjoy the show, and on the web, where videos of the improvised Southwest Airlines safety shows are uploaded by passengers and go viral. Letting crew go off-script goes against the norm for airlines--accustomed to operating on explicit, detailed and inflexible procedures and checklists. At the recent IATA Cabin Operations Safety Con