When I first heard of Air New Zealand’s new safety video, The Bare Essentials of Safety, I was a little surprised. After all, just four days ago, a passenger on a US Airways flight was arrested for stripping nude in front of his fellow travellers, and here are the Kiwis, encouraging flying buff.

Yes, yes, they’re naked. Naked New Zealanders. Whose bodies have been painted to resemble their flight uniforms. The video is embedded below, and while I suppose, technically, a YouTube of naked people should be classed as “not safe for work”, the simple facts are these: a.) with their body paint, it’s hard to actually notice that they’re naked. And b.) they’re very careful not to show any painted goody-goody parts. (Damn them!)

For those interested, at the end of the video, the dark-haired stewardess remarks that Air New Zealand has nothing to hide (well, nothing that can’t be hidden under body paint, anyway), then turns and walks down the aisle and you get to see her butt! And that, ladies and gentlemen, is as absolutely risque as this video gets (despite the somewhat suggestive scene of the same attendant demonstrating how to manually inflate her life jacket.

Truth be told, when I found out there was a blooper video, I was sort of hoping that the reason it was a blooper video is because it showed, y’know, painted nipples and so forth. Alas, it’s about as tame as the original.

ANZ’s purported launch of this video is two-fold: one, to promote fares that they claim “having nothing to hide”, and two, to encourage passengers to actually watch the safety videos at the start of each flight. Personally, I’d more inclined to watch the video if there was a.) more actual nudity of attractive women (sorry, I’m a pig, I know), or b.) if the flight attendants on the plane were, themselves, in body paint. According to the company website, they do fly into BWI …