Sex scenes, swearing and drugs: What airlines won't show on your inflight entertainment screen

Ever wonder why The Wolf of Wall Street never made it onto your list of inflight entertainment selections? Could be those 500-plus times the F-word was used in the movie. Or Reservoir Dogs? Maybe that scene where Mr Blonde redesigns the ear of L.A. police officer Marvin Nash.

WHAT GETS LEFT OUT?

Sex scenes, terrorist events, profanity, drug abuse, racist language or comments that disparage any culture, religion or nationality are likely to be cut from the movies that airlines show on their inflight entertainment systems. Aircraft disaster movies generally won't make it either, but that's not always so. Sully, the story of the US Airways flight that made an emergency landing on New York's Hudson River, saving the lives of all on board, was screened on Virgin Atlantic but no other airlines. In this as in many other areas Virgin Atlantic is one of the great disruptors of the airline industry, treading where few others dare. Aboard VA's maiden Gatwick-New York flight, the inflight selections included the comedy disaster film, Airplane, which also went under the name Flying High. The same carrier screened Flight, featuring Denzel Washington as a drug-afflicted pilot who wrestles his badly misbehaving aircraft to a controlled crash landing. VA also showed the full-length version of Cast Away, starring Tom Hanks in the role of modern-day Robinson Crusoe after his plane crashes and he's sees him washed ashore on a remote island. So did several other airlines, but with the gorier details of the crash landing obliterated.

Homosexuality is a bridge too far for most carriers, but here too there are exceptions. Call Me by Your Name made it onto the screens aboard British Airways, Virgin Atlantic and Air New Zealand among others, Moonlight was seen on Air New Zealand, but Brokeback Mountain was a little too explicit.

Middle Eastern airlines tend to be the most conservative in their inflight entertainment choices. Nude or semi-nude scenes, strong language, religious messages, scenes of drunken debauchery and references to pork - all grist for the mill on most European carriers – are likely to end up on the cutting-room floor. But Europeans have less appetite for gore and violence, a staple of the east Asian movie industry.

The demographics of flyers is changing. While airline passengers originating from the traditional strongholds of Europe and North America are still in the majority, those from China and India are in the ascendant. That means a new set of cultural preferences have come into play on the inflight entertainment menu. In August 2018, Singapore Airlines' website lists six European feature films on its IFE menu, 11 from Hollywood, six from Singapore, five from China and 10 Indian and Arabic titles. Emirates has close to 700 movies currently on its inflight entertainment system, in Telegu, Farsi, Arabic, Punjabi, Polish, Pashto, Urdu, Tagalog, Russian, Mandarin, Norwegian and Malayalam.

Thus the temptation to go for vanilla. Inoffensive, feelgood and soothing, the rom-com genre is an airline staple, which explains why The Princess Bride, The Bridget Jones movies and The Big Sick are enduring favourites. Anything based on Jane Austen's novels is palatable across the board, even among audiences for whom the subtleties of the English class system might be an opaque concept. In the same category, When Harry Met Sally, Four Weddings and a Funeral and Roman Holiday among yesterday's rom-com classics.

WHO DECIDES WHAT GETS CUT?

Some studios will create a flight-ready version of their movies, a sanitised edit of the cinema release with chainsaw massacres, excessive use of the F-word and lusty love scenes deleted, but larger airlines will choose how to tailor the movies they show. In general these movies are edited not by the airlines themselves but by independent contractors such as Global Eagle, the leading provider of inflight content and Wi-Fi streaming technology for airlines. A client airline will set the parameters of what it doesn't want to appear on its IFE screens and Global Eagle makes the cuts, overdubs the language or whatever might be required to conform to the airline's specs.

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