The new American Airlines safety video was supposed to debut back in April. It was delayed due to the pandemic. They queued it for December rollout, but decided it wasn’t a good time and tried to pull it back. However there are currently about 70 planes flying around showing the new video.

I posted a copy to YouTube. When the airline officially debuts it, it will be edited slightly to highlight masks and the like.

Of course the safety video will be on fewer planes than would have been the case in April. American has been taking out seat back video screens from their narrowbody aircraft, moving to a new standard where passengers do not get their own TVs and flight attendants have to perform safety demonstrations manually.

What’s striking though is that since the video was filmed in 2019, but is being shown now that 19,000 employees have been involuntarily let go (many more were encouraged to leave with modest buyout packages), a large number of people in the video giving safety instructions are no longer being paid by American.

• Crew cast for the video skew young relative to the American Airlines workforce. I assume that casting decision was intentional. Younger crew are far ore likely to have been furloughed.

• At some bases, cabin crew who started working for American Airlines in the 80s are too junior now to get off reserve. The average age of an American Airlines flight attendant is now mid-fifties.

As a result, JonNYC points out that many of the employees featured in the safety video are… no longer employees. They’ve been furloughed since the video was shot.

I'm told:
"fwiw the safety video was originally set to be released in 2Q but got put on hold due to covid.
Jill Surdek is worried that releasing now…
..due to no masks in the video etc (filmed in 2019) and 20ish team members that are featured in the video but now furloughed."

— JonNYC (@xJonNYC) December 1, 2020

Among well over a dozen others in the video, Lexi– the brunette speaking through most of the video– is presently furloughed.

— JonNYC (@xJonNYC) December 2, 2020

That’s… awkward.