A Qantas Airlines flight from Sydney to Tokyo on Saturday began with a malfunctioning inflight entertainment system that rendered individual movie selections impossible.
The crew was only able to play one movie across all passenger screens, Qantas confirmed in a statement sent to the National Post on Tuesday.
“Our crew members had a limited list of movies that they were able to play across all screens on the aircraft and based on (requests) from a number of passengers, a particular movie was selected for the entire flight.”
Qantas did not name the movie in its statement, but multiple photos of inflight screens were posted on social media by users claiming to be on the flight, revealing the film to be “Daddio,” a 2023 sexually explicit film starring Dakota Johnson and Sean Penn, reported several media outlets, including CNN, The Guardian, and USA Today.
That film is rated R for adult language, sexual material and brief graphic nudity. There are some scenes where Johnson’s character scrolls through explicit texts from a lover that are shown on screen.
When it became clear the movie was not appropriate for all ages, the crew attempted to fix the screens of passengers who did not want to watch it, Qantas said. But the crew found that wasn’t possible.
“The movie was clearly not suitable to play for the whole flight and we sincerely apologize to customers for this experience,” Qantas said in its statement. “All screens were changed to a family-friendly movie for the rest of the flight, which is our standard practice for the rare cases where individual movie selection isn’t possible.”
The airline said it is reviewing how the movie was selected.
Meanwhile, Air New Zealand joined the conversation on X by responding to The Independent’s tweet on the reported incident. “Plot twist: We let you choose your movies,” the NZ airline wrote on X.
“Our cabin crew apologized to customers inflight, particularly those who had complained about the content, and our customer team will follow up with all customers,” Qantas said.
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