Airline apologizes after graphic in-flight films play on all screens

Airline passengers were left stunned after an offensive film was played on all screens on the plane during a recent Qantas flight from Sydney to Tokyo's Haneda Airport.

The Australian airline said passengers on the Oct. 5 flight were unable to select movies individually due to technical issues, so crew members selected a movie for the entire cabin from a small list of options.

“Our crew members had a limited list of films to play on all screens on the aircraft, and at the request of a number of passengers, a specific film was selected for the entire flight,” Qantas told NBC News in a statement on Tuesday.

Qantas did not specify in its statement which film was being shown, but several passengers posted photos of their screens showing Dakota Johnson and Sean Penn's R-rated drama “Daddio.”

According to the US Motion Pictures Association, “Daddio,” directed by Christy Hall and released in theaters in 2023, is rated R “for consistent language, sexual material and brief graphic nudity.”

One person on Reddit who claimed to have been a passenger on the flight wrote that “Daddio” contained “a lot of sexting” and travelers had no way to prevent it from being viewed.

“It was impossible to stop, dim or turn it off,” this person said wrote on Reddit, alongside images of explicit text shown in the film. “The film they played was extremely inappropriate. It featured graphic nudity and a lot of sexting – the kind where you could literally read the text on the screen without needing headphones.”

The alleged passenger said the incident was “very unpleasant, especially with families and children on board” and said it took the airline “almost an hour” to replace the film with “a more child-friendly film.”

HuffPost has reached out to Qantas for comment.

The airline said in a statement that cabin crew tried unsuccessfully to repair the screens for passengers who complained.

“The film was clearly not suitable for viewing throughout the flight and we sincerely apologize to customers for this experience,” a Qantas spokesperson said in a statement, according to NBC News.

After the technical issue was resolved, “all screens were switched to a family-friendly movie for the remainder of the flight,” the airline said. “We are checking how the film was selected.”

Qantas passengers experienced another hiccup on October 2 when a plane en route from Sydney to Wellington, New Zealand, was forced to turn back just an hour into the flight after reports of an “unusual smell” in the cabin.

After the plane landed safely, a crew member was taken to the hospital with unknown symptoms, Fox Business reports. According to reports, neither passengers nor pilots were affected.