[aaron]

I am hoping to bring attention to a troubling incident which reflects very poorly on Delta.

On Sunday, October 28, 2007, I flew from Los Angeles to Atlanta on Flight 101, and sat in the Coach section. According to Sky magazine, the movie “Nancy Drew” was supposed to be shown. I was therefore surprised when the attendant announced the movie “Knocked Up” would be playing. “Knocked Up” is an R-rated movie with drug use, sex scenes, and profanity, and is inappropriate for children. I had seen the movie on DVD (and own it), and knew that it would be difficult to edit the movie enough to show in the coach cabin.

As the movie was showing, I became convinced that there was a problem (note that I did not buy headphones, so I am only relying on what I saw on the screen). Although I only captured several explicit shots with my camera phone, if you watch the movie you will see exactly what hundreds of Delta passengers in the coach cabin of the Boeing 767 saw. Male nudity from the back. Female breasts on a television set playing within the movie. Bong use. Sex scenes. None of which are appropriate for children.

After witnessing the second sex scene in the movie, I went to the back of the cabin to bring this to the attention of the attendants. I informed them that the movie was inappropriate, that it had a warning at the beginning not to be shown in the coach cabin, and showed them pictures I took from my camera phone of the two main actors having sex. According to the time stamps on my camera phone, this occurred at around 1:35 pm P.S.T. I was stunned by the response from the attendants:

• None of the attendants immediately stopped the movie, even after seeing the camera-phone pictures and agreeing they were inappropriate.
• One attendant claimed she was going to “write up the incident.” I have no idea whether this occurred. She also said that Delta’s standards must be getting a lot more lax.
• Another attendant suggested I complain, perhaps to the CEO.
• Three of four attendants seemed mildly sympathetic, but not took any concrete action.
• A fourth attendant made the absurd statement that “Parents ought to keep their kids occupied” during the flight if they don’t like the movie. I informed him of the sex scenes in the movie and told him that I 100% disagreed with what he was saying. I offered to show him the photos from the camera-phone, but he did not look at them.
• I went back to my seat, because it didn’t seem like the attendants were at all serious about the inappropriate content.

As I sat in my seat, I decided to continue to take pictures with my camera-phone, because I felt the attendants were wrong not to act on my complaint. According to the time stamps on my camera-phone pictures, the movie went on for another seventeen minutes. The attendants finally stopped the movie immediately after a man sticks his face into a Las Vegas stripper’s rear end (she appears to be wearing a thong or skimpy bikini).

Even if you want to believe that the Delta flight attendants made an innocent error in showing the film in the first place, the 17-minute delay after seeing pictures of sex scenes is completely unacceptable. Once the crew pulled the film, and put in the correct “Nancy Drew” film, the Crew Leader came over to my seat, apologized, and asked that I delete the camera phone pictures because she thought she’d get in trouble. I didn’t delete the pictures, and in fact, I showed them to her. Finally, one other attendant came by and informed me that at least one passenger complained about the “Knocked Up” movie being pulled from the coach cabin. I find it shocking that a Delta attendant would try to intimidate me from making an appropriate complaint by telling me how annoyed other passengers were with me.

The next day, Monday October 29, I called Delta Customer Service to complain. They took down the main points of my complaint, and said that someone would follow-up. Within a few hours, I spoke to a woman from Delta. I was astonished by her response. At first, she basically said “I’m sorry you have a problem with the content of the movie,” like it was my standards that were wrong. I then asked her whether she was aware of the movie I was talking about. She represented that she was aware of the movie “Knocked Up.” I then asked her why she thought that nudity, sex scenes and drug use were appropriate for a movie in the coach cabin. She then said that she hadn’t actually seen the movie, only the sneak previews. She was clearly being dishonest with me, and it was asked for her full name because I didn’t feel she was going to follow up in any serious way. I forwarded two pictures – both taken after I had complained to the attendants – to show her of the seriousness of the situation. Ultimately, I found that the Delta customer representative was completely unresponsive and unsympathetic to my complaint. She tried to “explain away” the unacceptable behavior by the Delta flight attendants rather than deal with it.

So finally, 5 days after the incident, and 4 days after my initial complaint, I decided to write to the CEO. I also forwarded an email to the Delta rep that I spoken with, and she also forwarded my issues to the executive assistant to the CEO. Ultimately, no one was ever able to explain to me why the flight attendants made the comments they did, why there was such a long delay in reacting to my complaint, or what happened afterwards to the attendants.

Showing uncensored movies like "Knocked Up" in the coach cabin does not accord with the “family friendly” image I have of Delta. No one at any level of Delta was responsive. The camera-phone pictures I am uploading only begin to start to show how inappropriate the movie was. If you should watch the movie yourself, and you’ll see what hundreds of coach passengers on Delta 101 saw.

[aaron]

The last 2 pictures from Knocked Up were taken around 17 minutes after I complained to the attendants. The final picture is from the start of Nancy Drew.

[ldl007]

1. Showing the movie was definitely inappropriate.
2. Was a child seated with you? May be the flight assistants thought that you were just a trouble maker-while those with children did not care.

[aaron]

It's been a while since I've been on this board (I've flown Southwest the last few times I've flied, and they are very good, so no complaints).

In response to ldl007, there were no children seated next to me. I was flying by myself, but I certainly was thinking about what it would have been to fly with my then 2-year-old on board. There were, of course, quite a few children on the 767. It very well could have been the case that most people didn't care about Knocked Up playing, but I'm pretty sure some people did but just didn't want to speak up.

To Joy0309: I have a Palm Treo Cellphone, which doesn't take very good pictures, especially when the lighting is poor. I'm probably going to get one of those new iPhones soon.

Looking back on it, now, 9 months later, I'm still pretty stunned by this. I did get an email response from the executive assistant to Delta's CEO, but he couldn't tell me what follow-up ever happened. Overall, Delta didn't take this seriously.

[PHXFlyer]

Oh please. All movies shown on in-flight entertainment are edited to some degree. It looks to me like this was the edited version because in the "sex" scene you took pictures of the woman is clothed from the waiste down and is wearing a bra. In the other scenes I see two people in a pool, a topless woman covering her breasts with her hands, what appears to be a guy filmed from the rear with his pants falling down, and a guy with his face in close proximnity to what I assume is a female derriere which is clothed in some description of a g-string bikini.

I've seen "worse" on daytime television.

And are you serious about your 2 year old? Do you really think a 2 year old would even comprehend the images on the screen? I assume you'd rather your 2 year old watch a movie where people are blown up and killed rather than a little mild sexual content. Or maybe DL should only allow G rated movies on it's in-flight entertainment so that any kids on board of any age aren't subject to content their parents deem objectionable.

[Eagleguy]

Just fly first class and control your own movies. Duh....

[ldl007]

Hi Eagleguy:
Your response proves what this forum is about. Very insensitive and callous remarks-you didn't have to respond to the complaint. I am ashamed that you are an Airline Employee-a whopping majority of them are caring and and are sensitive to in flight situations.