Australian airline Qantas had a minor crisis when it showed a blue movie to all passengers on a flight. The company made the right moves by apologizing and by not overreacting. Some further explanation is warranted, which we hope it will provide.

A Qantas flight from Sydney to Tokyo last week (the exact date is unclear — bad reporting!) had a problem with its entertainment system. The glitch prevented passengers from picking individual movies to watch on their seatback screens. The crew reportedly polled the cabin-confined as to what film they’d agree to watch on all screens, which was possible to do even with the defect.

The winner, inexplicably, was Daddio, a 2023 arty film featuring Dakota Johnson as a woman returning home to Manhattan from JFK Airport and Sean Penn as her taxi driver. The exciting plot is the cab ride and the conversation. Also, the film is rated R due to language, nudity and sexual material, including sexts. In other words, NSFF — Not Safe for Flight. To make matters worse, due to the glitch, passengers couldn’t turn off their screens.

Suitable Fare

After about an hour — and after complaints from the travelers, especially those with kids, according to two Reddit commentors who say they were on the flight — Qantas finally replaced the flick with more suitable fare.

The company supplied a statement on the incident to media outlets. The most complete version we’ve seen is from CNN: “Our crew members had a limited list of movies that they were able to play across all screens on the aircraft and based on the request from a number of passengers, a particular movie was selected for the entire flight.”

It went on: “The movie was clearly not suitable to play for the whole flight and we sincerely apologise to customers for this experience. 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.”

Follow Up

It’s important in a crisis to follow through and provide information you promised. So, we hope Qantas releases what it learns about how the movie was picked. Along those lines, it’s encouraging that an airline official told USA Today that the company’s “customer team will follow up with customers.”

Another crisis aspect to an unusual story like this is the tendency for competitors to latch on. The Associated Press’ article points out an Air New Zealand tweet: “Plot twist: We let you choose your movies.”

Photo Credit: Qantas

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