The scenes played on every screen, according to comments from social media users. The airlines has since said the movie “was clearly not suitable.”
Sit back, relax and enjoy the … nudity and sexting?
The Australian airline Qantas is apologizing after a recent flight from Sydney to Haneda Airport in Tokyo featured an R-rated movie shown on every screen. And, according to online comments from people who said they were passengers on the flight, the movie could not be turned off.
The crew played the movie following the malfunction of personal in-flight entertainment systems last week, according to a person who recounted the flight experience on Reddit. The user added that the film, which features sexually explicit language, images and words displayed on the screen, played for almost an hour before it was shut off.
“It was super uncomfortable for everyone, especially with families and kids onboard,” the user wrote. “How is this acceptable for a major airline?”
Qantas said in a statement that the crew chose the movie “based on the request from a number of passengers.”
Neither the Reddit user nor the airline divulged what was the movie in question, but other media outlets and internet sleuths have identified it as the 2023 film “Daddio,” starring Dakota Johnson and Sean Penn. Set almost entirely inside a New York City taxicab, the drama explores a chance encounter between a talkative cabdriver and his passenger, as he drives her from Kennedy Airport to Midtown Manhattan.
A New York Times review of the film this year noted that their conversations grow more intimate, leading the cabdriver to share a distasteful anecdote about his first wife and his thoughts about what married men want in a mistress, while the passenger is “surreptitiously sexting her tongue-lolling lover.” The Times reported that the film was rated R for “bared breasts and barroom language.”
Another review of the film, published by the nonprofit Common Sense Media, which prepares ratings of movies for families watching with children, said that “a brief but clear photo of an erect penis” is displayed.
Qantas said in the statement that it was reviewing how the movie was selected.
“The movie was clearly not suitable to play for the whole flight and we sincerely apologize to customers for this experience,” a Qantas spokesman said, adding that the screens were eventually changed to a family-friendly movie for the rest of the flight.
Kate Christobek is a reporter covering the civil and criminal cases against former president Donald J. Trump for The Times. More about Kate Christobek
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