Oops: Qantas Forces Entire Plane To Watch Adults-Only Film

I’m not sure what the flight crew was thinking, but passengers on a Qantas longhaul flight were forced to watch a film filled with explicit adults-only content after the in-flight-entertainment system malfunctioned. This should never have happened.

Qantas Screens Explicit Film Onboard With No Escape Possible

The incident took place on a Qantas flight from Sydney (SYD) to Tokyo Haneda (HND). As on passenger onboard shared:

So, I was on Qantas flight QF59 from Sydney to Haneda today, and the in-flight entertainment system was down. After a one-hour delay, the pilot decided to take off anyway, but the only option left was for the crew to play a movie on every screen – and it was impossible to pause, dim, or turn it off.

Here’s the kicker: the movie they played was extremely inappropriate. It featured graphic nudity and a lot of sexting – the kind where you could literally read the texts on screen without needing headphones.

It took almost an hour of this before they switched to a more kid-friendly movie, but it was super uncomfortable for everyone, especially with families and kids onboard. I’ve attached a few pics of the scenes (only from the sexting parts, no nudity).

How is this acceptable for a major airline? Has anyone else had something like this happen?

(there are some pictures there and they are so over the line for a movie screened for general audiences on an airplane)

The movie in question was R-rated Daddio, a 2o23 Hollywood film starring Dakota Johnson and Sean Penn.

I’m glad Qantas realized the error, but I cannot believe it took an hour to do so…didn’t anyone think to check the rating of a film before screening it on every single seat in a manner in which it could not even be dimed?

There’s nothing prudish about saying I don’t want my young children to see graphic violence or sex or nudity on an airplane. Frankly, I don’t want to see it either. I see those types of movies as unedifying in general and seek to avoid them, but there’s a mountain of difference between passengers watching an explicit R-rated film from their own seatback screens and making every passenger onboard captive to a film with gratuitous content. And yes, I will be the judge of what my own children watch.

Don’t tell me the kids could have just looked away. I’m old enough to remember the days of movies being screened on overhead monitors and asking a kid not to watch a screen is laughable.

So I hope Qatnas learned a lesson from this. I don’t blame the captain for taking off before the crew exceeded its maximum duty time, but better to leave the screens dark then to screen something like that.

Qantas has apologized:

“Qantas is now reviewing how the movie was selected. The movie was clearly not suitable to play for the whole flight and we sincerely apologise to customers for this experience.”

Good. Now make sure it does not happen again!

image: Qantas