Qantas apologizes for showing a film containing nudity and sexts throughout the flight

When you're traveling on a plane, it only takes a few seconds of graphic nudity being projected on your screen to feel the hot face of humiliation. Your fellow travelers will inevitably look over your shoulder and silently judge your film (and life) choices.

However, on a flight from Sydney to Tokyo on Saturday, everyone was collectively embarrassed when the crew played the same, slightly suggestive film on every entertainment system.

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Qantas Airlines flight QF59 had a faulty entertainment system that made individual movie selection impossible, the airline confirmed to The Washington Post. However, the crew was able to play a movie on all passenger screens. After taking a few requests (but perhaps not checking the film selection), the crew settled on “Daddio,” a 2023 drama starring Dakota Johnson and Sean Penn that takes place almost entirely in a taxi.

You wouldn't know it from the dialogue-heavy official trailer, but “Daddio” contains images that some parents might not want to show their children. While it's not Poor Things, it is rated R for adult language, sexual material and brief graphic nudity. There are a few scenes in which Johnson “scrolls through incoming text messages from a lover, some of which are explicit,” explained critic Ty Burr in a June review for The Post.

The IMDB Parent's Guide puts the issue less poetically: “Photos of naked female breasts and a prosthetic penis are shown on a phone.”

“The film was clearly not suitable for viewing throughout the flight and we sincerely apologize to our customers for this experience,” Qantas said in an email. “For the remainder of the flight, all screens were switched to a family-friendly film, which is our standard practice for the rare occasions when individual film selection is not possible.”

The airline said it was reviewing how the film was selected. The Australian news agency news.com.au first reported the incident.

Two Reddit users who posted about the flight wrote that passengers were unable to change their screens.

“It took almost an hour for them to switch to a more kid-friendly film, but it was super uncomfortable for everyone, especially with families and children on board. …How is this acceptable for a major airline?” wrote one Reddit user in a post that led to coverage of the incident. (The user did not respond to an interview request.)

Another Reddit user supported the claim that it was impossible to turn off the screens, adding that the crew eventually changed the flight film to “Inside Out 2.”

Overall, “Daddio” is not a raunchy film. The action takes place in a taxi ride from New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport to midtown Manhattan, “with Sean Penn at the wheel and Dakota Johnson in the back seat,” Burr wrote in his 2.5-star review.

The critic claims the film's sexual content is brief.

“I'm sure if it had been an action movie with people getting mowed down left and right, it would have been totally fine,” Burr said in an email Monday.

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