WHILE MANY AIRLINES have incorporated new speeches about COVID-19 protocol into their pre-flight safety announcements, Alaska Airlines, a major American airline, released a fun music video complete with a catchy tune.
Parodying the 1982 song “Safety Dance” by Men Without Hats, the video released last week was complete with dancing flight attendants, an enthusiastic keytar player, and clever lyrics like, “Well your friends don’t mask and why don’t they mask? Well they won’t fly this airline.”
The video also featured the airline’s notable “yellow cards” that pose as warnings for customers not wearing their mask.
The video, shot in the airline’s Boeing cabin trainer and the Alaska Maintenance Hangar in Seattle, was directed by Warren Fu, who has worked with artists like Dua Lipa, The Weeknd and Daft Punk, and choreographed by Anna Matuszewski, known for her work with Macklemore.
The Alaska Airlines employees who appear in the video were selected based on leader nominations and their ability and willingness to dance. Others were from the Alaska Flight Attendant Drill Team. They were required to learn the choreography at home and then spent eight hours in a rehearsal the day before filming to ensure they had all the moves right.
“From the director, to the choreography, the cameras, the music, makeup and hair artists and so on it was like being on the set of a movie,” Natalie, a flight attendant for Alaska’s sister airline Horizon Air who starred in the video, said in an airline blog post. “Every day was filled with excitement and anticipation. It was very professional, well organized and definitely on my top 10 things in life that I have been a part of.”
In response to the pandemic, Alaska Airlines has enhanced cleaning between flights and now requires passengers to complete a health agreement before they board their aircraft.
