Online reviews can make or break a business–especially when that review, instead of being buried in the back pages of Yelp, is send out to millions of subscribers.
Every day, YouTubers review countless products and experiences in all sorts of categories and niches, from Taipei night markets, electric saws, and egg timers, to pet food subscriptions, long-haul hiking trails, and plant-growing kits.
Many of these products and experiences are accessible to the average person–but then there are products like first-class flights. I don’t know about you, dear reader, but I am not in a position to cough up $10K for a four-hour jaunt. So, like millions of other people, I live vicariously through YouTube’s small but dedicated group of hardcore aviation reviewers.
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Their jobs, however, may be becoming more difficult.
As noted by UK Aviation News‘ Nick Harding, a growing number of airlines are implementing new policies that restrict or ban recording on flights. One of the “clearest recent examples” of these policy shifts, Harding wrote, is British Airways, which changed its conditions of carriage to prohibit filming or photographing airline crew members without their explicit consent. It also specifically bans livestreaming.
Harding points out that British Airways’ new rule is not a blanket ban. Reviewers can still record; they just have to be absolutely certain not to catch any identifying shots of staff.
However, its rule is in line with changes from other aviation brands–and these rules could indicate further future regulations.
“Airlines including Qantas, KLM and Virgin Australia have all introduced or reinforced similar policies in recent years, reflecting a broader industry shift towards tighter control of onboard filming,” Harding wrote.
We get it. It seems like everyone is recording everywhere these days, which means one slip of the thumb over the shutter and you’re the subject of the next viral plane freakout vid. And, yes, some livestreamers have garnered reputations for being public nuisances. Airline staff and fellow passengers are worried about their privacy, and they have every right to be.
Aviation YouTuber Noel Philips, who has 724K subscribers, told Harding that he already had a policy of trying to mitigate issues around filming.
“Personally I try to make sure when I’m filming onboard aircraft that I capture as little footage as possible of other passengers and crew,” he said. “You don’t need to show the crew and passengers to make a good video.”
Even if he does happen to capture footage of other folks on a flight, “It’s always possible to crop or conceal other passengers in the edit, and as aviation content creators we have a duty to protect passenger and crew privacy wherever possible,” he added.
Philips told Harding that he’s noticed “a growing trend” of airlines playing announcements about limited or banned filming onboard. “These ‘no filming’ policies seem to be becoming widespread outside the US, where stricter privacy policies are often in place,” he said. “The UAE, for example, has some of the strictest privacy protections on the planet, and content creators could end up with jail time should a crew member or passenger feature in a video and file a complaint.”
We saw these issues in action last June, when aviation reviewer Nonstop Dan posted a video about his first-class Kuwait Airlines flight from Bangkok to Kuwait. During the flight, a purser apparently confronted the creator for filming, and told him that if he posted anything about the flight online, the purser “could not guarantee [Dan’s] safety when we land.”
Dan said he hadn’t broken any Kuwait Airways rules and was paying attention to his fellow passengers’ privacy. He also, like a number of other aviation reviewers, doesn’t speak while filming; instead, to keep cabin noise down, he records narrative voiceovers once he’s back home.
The purser and captain ended up getting police involved once the plane touched down, and attempted to force Dan to delete his footage. Dan–after being released by police with his footage and posting about how he was treated–received a formal apology from Kuwait Airways’ Chairman and President, as well as a letter from Kuwait’s royal family.
He was cleared of wrongdoing, but if airlines continue tightening rules, creators doing what he did–simply filming while walking through the cabin–could violate policies and risk being kicked off flights.
Philips told Harding he thinks these clampdowns are, as we mentioned above, driven by a general increase in public recording.
“I do feel that there is an upsurge of passengers recording ‘air rage’ incidents, perceived bad service or other onboard incidents to post online for clicks,” he said. “I believe this is a major motivator behind airlines clamping down on the filming of passengers and crew—and I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing.”
If and when more of these policies come into play, aviation reviewers will have to figure out how to balance privacy and their jobs–and consumers will hopefully still be able to have an honest window into the quality of different airlines and their offerings.
