New Air France Safety Video – Sooo French and Sooo Chic!

Air France has just joined the unofficial “Creative Air Safety Video” movement by producing their very own, very French version of the short video that most of us have seen hundreds of times before.

They speak in French and in “Frenglish” (pardon my wording here, but the English pronunciation has a very strong French accent here), and they use the word “chic”! 🙂 They also add a truly French style to the whole visualization of this video by the dancing girls, the funny, airplane-like stage. The electronic devices hidden in books is also a creative idea that I’m sure comes from real-life experiences of flight attendants fighting with “trickier” passengers…

What I was surprised about is the sentence about “lost electronic devices”. I don’t think I have ever heard this instruction on any airplane from any airlines before – it sounds a bit surprising to me. Probably there is a reason for it, I’m wondering what it may be. If you have an idea, please share it in a comment below!

by balint01

Air New Zealand Marketing Videos

Funny and innovative safety videos for airlines are now a very trendy tool for marketing, especially as items for viral and social marketing.

Air New Zealand seems to be in the front line here, as they have created a very popular Hobbit version earlier in 2012 for the first part of the Hobbit trilogy: “An Unexpected Briefing” (a’la the title of the movie: “An Unexpected Journey”). They were followed with a pop-song like version of the safety instructions from Virgin America not so long afterwards.

So following the sometimes ugly creatures of the Hobbit Universe, Air New Zealand started 2014 with a different topic and a beautiful “partner”: the 50 year old Sports Illustrated – Swimsuit Edition!

To be honest, personally I like this one much better. What do you think? (the links to the other two are available in the first paragraph)

Not a safety video, but still worth to mention in the league of viral Airline marketing videos is the one that came with the second Hobbit movie last year: a short film of what a day is like at the official airline of Middle-Earth (aka.: New Zealand), starring real Air New Zealand employees from Flight Attendants to Engineers – and a plane slapping its wings like a bird. (title: “Just another day in Middle-earth“):

For the record, they also accompanied the second Hobbit movie (The Desolation of Smaug) with a special aircraft livery last year as well:

by balint01

Friday Fun: Racing Airport Vehicles

I believe all of us – who are at least a little bit interested in either cars/trucks or aviation – have watched the special airport vehicles from the airport terminals or the taxiing airplanes before. Well, the Top Gear guys had the privilege to even race them (older models of course…) in an older episode of their show, but let us share it with you as it is a pretty good episode – excellent for a little Friday Fun!

by balint01

Creative Flight Safety Video at Virgin America

There have been many tries to make the boring, before-flight Safety Demonstration/Video a little bit more enjoyable than the average, simple, talking version. There have been ad-hoc Rappers on Southwest Airlines, Hobbit themed videos on Air New Zealand for example, but let’s take a look at this latest, fresh, pop-song like Virgin America video:

If you like, you may watch it again, or look at the behind the scenes video. 🙂

by balint01

The Hobbit Flies With Air New Zealand (An Unexpected Briefing)

Air New Zealand has “always” been the official “Airline of Middle-earth”, and this is no different in case of the release of the latest Tolkien Movie, “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey”. But this time they have created a great short movie – which is actually useful for those passengers embarking on an expected journey aboard one of their planes as it prepares them for the unexpected safety situations.

First let’s take a look at their latest special livery aircraft (registration number: ZK-OKP), a Boeing 777-300ER, painted to promote the movie itself (see more images on airliners.net):

And then the funny Onboard Safety Demonstration Video with the very well known Lord of the Rings Characters:

I haven’t seen the movie yet, (will surely do) – but I don’t expect any “goofs” hidden with the random appearance of an Air New Zealand plane…

by balint01

The Sexiest WizzAir Flight Attendants

Here is what you’ve been waiting for! Choose your sexiest Flight Attendant and vote for her or him!

Wizzair, Central and Eastern Europe’s most popular low-cost airline has kicked off an interesting campaign on facebook, where you can select your favorite Wizzair Stewardess (or Steward) by voting. If you haven’t met (all of) them in person, you may just look at the pictures, and choose the sexiest, the best looking, the most smiling or simply the one you find the friendliest.

Sexy Stewardess are always a hot topic, and here the candidates have been pre-selected by fashion and airline industry experts, and now it’s our turn to choose the 14 faces of the airline for 2011. The winners will part-take in a professional photo-shoot and will feature in WizzAir‘s European marketing campaigns and ads this year. We can have our say of who we want to see on large (airport) billboards, in magazines or on TV.

All you need to do is:

1. go to facebook.com/wizzaircom
2. click on the “Wizz Ambassadors” link
3. allow the facebook app to use your personal data
4. vote on your favorite WizzAir girl or boy once a day – you have 7 votes per day, one for each country

Looks like the one vote per day per country is a good rule, as this should guarantee that the decision will not only rely on the number of facebook users per country, but will have votes going to all country representatives. It is also useful as WizzAir will have two faces in all countries where they operate from. By the way, the seven countries are: Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary (where WizzAir started and still has its headquarters), Poland, Romania, Serbia and Ukraine. You can see one of the Hungarian candidates here, Livia Toth (no suggestion or campaigning, just a pretty stewardess), but there are lots of other good looking WizzAir flight attendants in the facebook app that you can vote for!

The ones selected by the WizzAir facebook fans will not only be one of the faces of WizzAir in 2011 but I’m sure they will also gain popularity, (even more) self-confidence and potentially a new personal fan-base on facebook?

by balint01

Friday Fun: Changing Landing Gear In The Air

It is not a classical joke or typical Friday Fun edition, instead this is a classical video from classical times, when airplanes were slower and allowed such a special acrobatic achievement. I hope you enjoy it and find it interesting, like I did.

by balint01

Friday Fun: Terrourist!

Have You ever wondered what may happen if you get an (over) cautious pilot on your flight whose mind immediately goes into “yellow alert” based on a reported nail file and a can of grape juice?

Check out this funny video series by tac.tv about a cautious Pilot and the “story” of his flight:

Are we Tourists or (potential) Terrorists nowadays? Or are we “Terrourists”? “It’s hard to tell these days…”

One thing to remember: do not carry a nail file AND drink canned grape juice onboard at the same time on a French flight! 🙂

by balint01

Holiday Wishes

Even though we are passed the Christian Christmas period as well as the Jewish Hanukah, we are before the Orthodox Christmas as well as all the New Year celebrations around the world, thus we would like to wish all of our loyal Readers and Partners a Very Happy Holiday Season!

Check out this special Holiday Wish from the co-workers of TAP, the Portuguese National Carrier. They prepared a special show for their passengers right before Christmas at their Home Airport in Lisbon, Portugal, using the Airport Terminal as the stage and playing the accompanying music through the airport loudspeakers.

by balint01 and Szafi

Plane Cemetery In The Desert

About a month ago I wrote a post about a designer company creating fantastic furniture pieces of plane parts they collect in plane cemeteries. But what are these exactly?

Well, it’s pretty much the same as with cars. Once a car becomes totally useless you take them to salvage yards, where you can take them apart and buy some parts if you can use them for anything.  Otherwise they rest in peace in these graveyards for decades.

How many plane cemeteries are there on the planet? Well, who knows? But it’s not just one or two. There must be millions of plane both military and jets around in deserted areas. Some of them are in the US, some in the Middle-East, but they can be located practically anywhere.

Today I found this blogpost with a nice story and even much nicer photos of a plane junkyard in the Mojave desert, California.

Plane Graveyard Mojave, California

Plane Graveyard Mojave, California

Take a look at them and if you like them, here is another album on Flickr with a bunch of other beautiful photos – even if the subject of the pictures is rather sad.

Plane Graveyard Mojave, California

Have fun with them!

by Szafi