In December Alaska Airlines introduced The Safety Dance, taking the Men Without Hats’ classic and applying it to air travel during the Covid-19 pandemic.

How is it even possible that – despite all of the effort and money that’s gone into safety videos – no airline did this until now?

To celebrate joining the global oneworld alliance today, Alaska Airlines has released a new version of their Safety Dance featuring cameos by employees and executives from oneworld partner airlines. (HT: One Mile at a Time)

This. Is. Amazing. if only because it features American Airlines President Robert Isom doing the Safety Dance. There are employees of oneworld carriers featured from as far remote as Fiji Airways, Malaysia Airlines, SriLankan and S7.

Lucky from One Mile at a Time nails it when he offers, “[t]he only thing that could make this video any better is if Qatar Airways CEO Akbar Al Baker participated, because I feel like he’d have some great dance moves.”

Here are the lyrics:

S-A-F-E-T-Y safety dance /
We can fly where you want to, we can leave your house behind, but if your friends don’t mask and why don’t they mask well they won’t fly this airline /
You can fly if you wan to ’cause we do safety right, we have air that’s clean and disinfectant machines zapping germs like an arcade space fight /
And we dance, do the dance, everybody wash some hands /
Do the dance, do the dance, while always wearing a mask /
Do the dance, do the dance, no seriously please wash your hands /
Do the dance, do the dance, HEPA filters cleaning commence /
Alaska’s safety dance, Alaska’s safety dance, Alaska’s safety dance…

Men Without Hats released their original in 1982, and it’s a protest song against disco clubs of the 80s. Lead singer Ivan Doroschuk was kicked out of a club for pogoing. Disco dancing was done with partners, while new wave dancing was done solo – and pogoing was jumping up and down, it eventually led to slamdancing.

This was seen as a threat to disco, and disco dancers, so bouncers would kick people out of their clubs. The Safety Dance demands freedom of expression. The safety video demands a certain conformity (safety precautions during Covid-19) that we hope won’t last past summer.

The only airline or airport video I can think of that comes close to being this awesome is Munich airport’s employees lip syncing ‘Come Away With Me’ by the Donots (seriously, if you haven’t ever watched this, you must).