JOHANNESBURG (dpa) – ''Ladies and Gentleman, welcome to Zimbabwe.

Sorry, I mean Johannesburg.''

''Please be aware that when you enter the terminal building you will be strip-searched for dangerous weapons. Don't worry. If you don't have any, they'll give you some.''

Flying has become a very serious business in recent years.

Standing in long queues as your shoes are perused by security scanners is enough to wipe a smile off the cheeriest of faces - unless the pong of pungent socks gives you a chuckle.

So it's a relief to find an airline that has you rolling in your lazy boy, as South Africa's Kulula refers to the seats of its aircraft.

The low-cost carrier, which serves Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban, Port Elizabeth and George, doles out humor the minute you climb aboard one of its bright green planes.

On a flight from Durban to Johannesburg in early March, the star performer was a blonde stewardess, whom a badge identified as Lorraine, The Boss.

Announcing the safety instructions in a husky, Afrikaans-inflected English, she points out the emergency exit to any ''skelm'' (rascal) passenger who might be travelling with a lover and has just noticed their spouse is also onboard.

''So sit back and enjoy our in-flight film, which is Gone ... With the Wind,'' she continued, relishing in her routine.

Two men in the front row were so red-faced with laughter they looked like they might need oxygen.
That humor has come to define Kulula since it burst onto the South African market eight years ago, offering no-frills flying.

''We were bringing something new to the market so we had to do it in a new way,'' Heidi Brauer, Kulula's marketing director, explains.

Before that, flying within South Africa - where the car is king, even over long distances - had an ''upper-crusty, neckscarf-and-hat kind of feeling,'' she says, adding: ''Humour is such an icebreaker.''

But humor can also fall flat if the material isn't changed on a frequent basis, so Kulula has given the job of writing the onboard scripts to a group of local comedians, who also take turns to guest edit the in-flight magazine.

At the same time, Kulula has begun using its aircraft as a canvas for its zany world view.