NEW YORK — Qantas Airlines has issued an apology after a movie with explicit sex scenes and graphic language was shown on all passengers’ screens during a flight from Australia to Japan, reports say.
The airline is blaming a technical issue for the R-rated film “Daddio,” starring Sean Penn and Dakota Fanning, being shown on all screens, USA Today reports. Passengers were unable to choose individual movies during the 9½-hour flight last week from Sydney to Tokyo, so the crew chose the film after receiving some requests from passengers, The Guardian reports.
Many passengers were unhappy with the choice, reports say. The film carries an R rating for “language throughout, sexual material and brief graphic nudity.”
“The movie they played was extremely inappropriate,” a passenger wrote on Reddit, according to NBC News. “It was impossible to pause, dim, or turn it off.”
The Guardian reports another passenger wrote, “These poor kids and their parents because you should’ve heard the audible gasps across the plane.”
When crew members realized the movie was not appropriate for all passengers, they attempted to fix the screens for those who didn’t watch. When this didn’t work, they changed the movie selection to a children’s film, reports say. “Daddio” reportedly was played for about an hour.
“The movie was clearly not suitable to play for the whole flight and we sincerely apologize to customers for this experience,” a Qantas spokesperson said in a 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.”
Qantas says it’s reviewing the incident.
(The Associated Press contributed to this story.)
