I’ve written a few deep dive blogs recently on creative, hilarious, and novel airline safety videos. We can all agree that the trend in aviation seems to be going in the direction of these types of airline safety videos – otherwise, how does an airline get a jaded passenger, who has perhaps flown hundreds of times, to pay attention? Taking a lesson from seasoned marketers, there are 3 main themes that we see used to jolt the jaded jetsetter out of his pre-flight stupor and get him to actually watch the airline safety video: humor, sex, and celebrity mascots.

Drum-roll please! Without further ado, here are the top 5 all-time best airline safety videos, from number five to number one:

5. Turkish Airline’s football-themed airline safety video. Turkish Airlines has taken the celebrity theme to a whole new level with its latest video, featuring the Manchester United football (soccer) club. In the video, team members act out various elements of flight safety using humor and silliness. While the video is completely in Turkish, it can be universally understood. Well done, Turkish Airlines:

4. Virgin America’s hip-hop pop music airline safety video. This one is pretty cool – Virgin America uses elements of humor, catchy music/dance, and sex to get the message across. I would expect nothing less from the company that claims Richard Branson as a figurehead, and has uses the motto “Buckle up to get down” as the tagline to its airline safety video. Virgin America has enlisted the help of Virgin Produced, Director Jon M. Chu, Choreographers Jamal Sims and Christopher Scott, Song & Lyrics by Todrick Hall, Composer/Producer Jean-yves “Jeeve” Ducornet, Virgin America teammates, and dance stars like Mike Song and Madd Chadd to give its safety video a new song and dance:

3. The Delta meme-filled “internetest” airline safety video. You can read more about this safety video on my blog here. “The Internetest safety video on the Internet,” hints at 22 internet-themed memes throughout the course of the video, and focuses on humor to get the safety message across:

2. The Air New Zealand – Hobbits airline safety video. As the official airline of Middle Earth, Air New Zealand has gone all out to celebrate the third and final film in The Hobbit Trilogy – The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies. You can read my blog review of the airline safety video and the Air New Zealand flight here. You can even tweet about “The Most Epic Safety Video Ever Made” using twitter hashtag #airnzhobbit. The Air New Zealand airline safety video uses fantastical and whimsical elements of transporting passengers to Middle Earth to get the airline safety message across – to me, this falls in line with the “mascot” and celebrity marketing technique:

1. The new Delta airline safety video. At the very top of our list is the new Delta airline safety video, which again uses humor to make that bored and otherwise jaded jetsetter pay attention. This airline safety video actually became the best part of the entire flight I recently took. Well done, Delta! It was not only hilarious, but subtly clever too – I really enjoyed the man with women’s hands complete with nail polish. How many ironic scenarios can you catch in this video?:

Well, that’s all folks. I’d love to hear from you if you think I’ve missed any airline safety videos that belong on this list. Tweet them out to me @tripchi, or leave your comments in the blog here!