Qantas has apologised to passengers on a flight from Sydney to Japan after a sexually explicit film was played to the entire plane.
Passengers on the flight to Haneda were shown the start of Daddio, a 2023 film starring Dakota Johnson. The film is rated R for “language, sexual material and brief graphic nudity” in the US, and MA15+ for “strong coarse language and nudity” in Australia.
Technical issues meant individual movie selection was not available, so after a request from some passengers, the crew chose to play the film for the entire flight. Once passengers realised the content of the movie, crew members ended it and instead put a children’s film on screens.
“The movie was clearly not suitable to play for the whole flight and we sincerely apologise to customers for this experience,” a spokesperson for Qantas said.
“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.
“We are reviewing how the movie was selected.”
After the flight, some passengers shared the experience on social media. One described the movie as “40 minutes of penis and boobs”.
“These poor kids and their parents because you should’ve heard the audible gasps across the plane,” wrote the passenger.
“[The film] was featuring Dakota Johnson and I really thought they were playing Madame Web or something – I honestly don’t know if that would’ve been worse.”
Another passenger wrote that the screens appeared locked and the movie could not be turned off until staff changed it.
• This article was amended on 8 October 2024 to clarify that the film is rated R in the US and MA15+ in Australia.
