A commercial airline issued an apology this week after a sexually explicit movie was mistakenly shown on every screen in the cabin during an international flight to Asia.
The incident occurred last week on a Qantas flight from Sydney to Tokyo’s Haneda Airport, which lasted over 9 1/2 hours, a Qantas spokesperson told USA TODAY on Tuesday.
Due to “technical issues with the inflight entertainment,” individual movie selections were unavailable. As a result, a movie was chosen for the entire cabin “based on requests from several passengers,” the spokesperson explained.
The selected movie was “Daddio,” featuring Dakota Johnson and Sean Penn. The R-rated film includes strong language, sexual content, and graphic nudity.
A passenger on flight QF59 shared their frustration on Reddit, stating, “The movie they played was highly inappropriate. There was no way to pause, dim, or turn it off… It took almost an hour before they switched to a more family-friendly film, but the situation was uncomfortable, especially for families with children onboard.”
A reader responded, “That’s unbelievable! How could they not choose a safer option, like Finding Nemo or Despicable Me, from the available movies? It’s crazy to pick something so adult-oriented.”
When the crew realized the movie wasn’t suitable for all passengers, the airline attempted to fix the screens for those who didn’t want to watch. However, when it became clear this wasn’t possible, the flight shifted to a children’s film. The cabin crew apologized to passengers, particularly those who had complained about the content.
