Passengers often ignore in-flight safety videos. But this ‘honest' one has 8.4 million views

“Greetings from the cockpit. This is your captain speaking.”

It’s a phrase frequent flyers know well.  

Only this isn’t a pilot. And what follows isn’t the same ol' in-flight safety talk.

Rather, it’s the opening salvo of a now viral YouTube video from travel journalist Doug Lansky, who delivers a near 7-minute "honest pre-flight safety demonstration ... that airlines are afraid to show you.”  

The tongue-in-cheek video has racked up 8.4 million views, an impressive achievement for a fake version of a safety briefing that most travelers ignore.

Lansky said he was inspired by a discussion he had with a pilot he sat next to on a flight years ago.   

When the safety demonstration video began, “I noticed he wasn't paying attention to it. And if you travel a lot, nobody really does,” said Lansky. “So I said ‘What would you say, if you could say anything?’ And he rattled off a bunch of stuff.”

Lansky said he then posed the same question to others in the aviation industry.

The video, he said, is “a composite of these different conversations I've had with pilots over the years — what would they say if they could do the safety test, and they weren't bound by the legal team of the airline?"

Keeping it ‘real’

The premise of the video is that the aircraft’s entertainment system is down (“so we can’t show you the $2 million safety video that an ad agency did for us”), and thus the pilot is going to deliver a “real safety talk” to passengers.   

The video advises passengers to practice unbuckling their seatbelt (“I know you all know how to use it but that’s because you’re not losing your sh*t right now”). Lansky said that research shows that when people are panicking — say they’re upside down or in a smoke-filled cabin — they tend to press the seatbelt buckle, as if it had a button like a car seatbelt.     

“You really need to kind of visualize actually lifting the flap,” Lansky told CNBC Travel. “You need that muscle memory, and most of us have that more with a car than with an airplane.”

The video also stresses to passengers that they must leave their bags on the plane in the event of an emergency evacuation.

“In the event of something like an engine fire, we need you all off the plane in about 90 seconds,” it states. “My first officer and I will also be trying to get off this plane, and the last thing we want is to be cock-pit blocked by your roll-on.”

As to whether the crew will be working to maximize your time to move about the cabin — don’t bet on it, the video advised.

“We’ll probably keep the seatbelt sign on for nearly the entire flight because our flight crew doesn’t like to be bothered in the galley,” it states.  

Is this true? “Oh yes,” a U.S. flight attendant with more than two decades of experience told CNBC Travel.

“Especially during [food or drink] service,” she said. “Or when someone decides to come stand over you and chat while you’re eating. It’s funny — people act a lot differently on the airplane than they do in normal life." She asked to remain anonymous because her employer advises against making public statements to media outlets.

And those life jackets under your seat? “Forget about it,” advises the video. “They’re less likely to save your life than those little airline pillows.”

But here’s where our fake pilot may go a step too far, said a first officer for a major U.S. airline who asked to remain anonymous because he also is not authorized to speak to media.

He said the video is “certainly written by someone who knows the ins and outs of airline flying,” but that he doesn’t agree with dismissing life jackets.

As for the accuracy of the video’s advice, most of it is true, the first captain said.  

“But you would obviously never really hear it from a flight crew,” he added.  

Researching in-flight injuries

Lansky said he came across some astounding figures while researching the statistics cited in the video.

For example, passengers tend to worry about crashes and severe turbulence, but statistically they are much more likely to be injured by their own luggage, he said.

“Over the years, more people have been hurt, by far, from their own duty-free bottles falling out of the overhead compartment and whacking them on the head … after they've landed, than any kind of turbulence,” he said.

The drink cart is another improbable source of injury, Lansky said, adding that flight attendants told him they regularly hit passengers whose body parts encroach on the aisle.  

He said he asked flight attendants how many times they bump passengers elbows, knees and feet on long-haul flights.

The most common answer? About 20, he said.

“That was asking about 20 or 30 different flight attendants,” he said. “They don't break knees or elbows or wrists each time, but they bump into that many people per flight.”

Views come ‘in waves’

The video wasn’t an instant success, said Lansky, who posted it about four years ago.

“It kind of went in waves,” he said. “When I first put it online, it had like 200 views for a couple months, and then somebody found it, and it went bananas.”

Lansky said he’s a huge fan of "The Daily Show," "Late Night with Seth Meyers" and other evening political shows because “they cut thru the BS and keep things entertaining, intelligent and real.” Shows like those shape the travel industry commentary he provides on his YouTube channel “ReThinking Tourism,” he said.

The viral video brought attention to Lansky’s career, which now focuses on tourism consulting and conference speaking but, he said, its success has hit closer to home for him. As a verifiable YouTuber, with a viral video, he won newfound respect from his daughter, he said.  

"My teenage daughter was giving me a hard time for trying to do something on YouTube," he said. But when the video reached 2 million views, "her chin hit the floor."

“That was the best thing that came out of it."