This Is What Happens When Plane Emergency Instructions Are Ignored

If you’ve been on an aeroplane enough times, you probably have the safety information memorised: “In the event of an evacuation, please proceed calmly to the nearest emergency exit,” and so on.

But there’s a difference between hearing that information and having a mental image of what it might look like — so Japan Airlines has created a unique safety video to illustrate exactly what might happen during various flight emergencies.

The video maintains the cheery “sit back, relax and enjoy your flight” attitude of the typical airline safety presentation, but it also includes animated scenes of what happens when people disregard the instructions. Passengers fly out of their seats during turbulence, block aisles with their baggage during evacuations, and damage evacuation slides with high heels.

I don’t know which part of this safety video will hit you the hardest: the moment where the small child assumes the brace position in preparation for impact, or the moment when dozens of successfully evacuated passengers run away from a downed aircraft.

But I bet it will be unforgettable — and that’s the point. In the case of a real emergency, you don’t want to be asking yourself whether you can be the one person who manages to save their carry-on bag. You want to be the person who remembers the video of the man who got his bag stuck in the aisle and prevented the other passengers from exiting the plane.

As the Japan Airlines press release explains, this new safety video “draws on actual incidents that have recently taken place across the airline industry.” Let’s hope it does its job and helps people remember — and visualise — how to stay safe in the future.