Back in February an incident occurred which just came to the light of publicity. A family flying from Colorado to Baltimore caused the flight to be diverted to Chicago. All because of the in-flight movie.

The family was shocked during the flight when the movie began. It was a PG13-rated movie, and once that is  described as being very violent (name of the movie is Alex Cross). After the first scene, they could not bear to have their kids exposed to it. They asked the stewardess to disable the screen in the area where they were sitting, and the others would watch on the main screen. Eventually, the pilot decided to divert the plane to to a disturbance, and they landed in Chicago. In Chicago the airline put this family on a different flight.

We experienced something similar once, when we flew on Alitalia through Italy. The in-flight movie was shown on a central screen. There were no personal screens on this flight. And it was a very inappropriate movie for a public showing where those who don't want to see cannot turn off the screen. Complaining to the stewardess did not help, and we suffered through it the best we could. I am told the culture is different in Europe to the point that the type of nudity on screen was not something they considered inappropriate, so they probably did not even understand what bothered us.

We are now in the middle of 2013. There is no acceptable reason why any airline is flying airplanes that do not have personal screens. The central screen on a flight is so outdated that it should no longer exist. The FAA, or whoever is in charge, should force the airlines to install personal screens and get rid of the central screen systems. With a personal screen, one can change the channel to a different movie or music station, or even turn it off. I get that showing only G-rated movies on a flight might be boring for the adults, but showing violence and/or nudity is inappropriate for the kids - giving an option via personal screens is a perfect solution.

And, if an airline refuses to, there should at least be some policy in place regarding appropriateness of in-flight movies. I would prefer people suffer with the boredom of a boring movie than the inappropriate viewing of a child of violence and nudity. But this should never happen as airlines should all have personal screens installed in their airplanes.