Should porn be allowed on airlines?

(Image credit: DANILO SCHIAVELLA/epa/Corbis)

last updated 8 January 2015

Airlines already charge for blankets, legroom, food, and booze. Now one European carrier wants to expand those offerings to include porn. The chief of Irish discount airline Ryanair tells Britain's Sun that the company is considering offering titillating in-flight entertainment. The porn would be available via a Ryanair app for tablets and smartphones, which passengers could also use to gamble or play games. Does porn really have a place on crowded, irritant-packed airplanes?

This is a terrible idea: "If you thought sitting next to someone with a baby or a large person spilling over into your seat was bad, imagine spending hours on a plane next to someone drooling over pornography," says Mark Stachiew at Canada.com. Worse yet, imagine a young child sitting next to a porn watcher. Would there need to be an "adults-only" section on the plane? It's hard to imagine this idea really "taking off."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

But you can already watch porn on a flight: "If adult content is available via a smartphone app, doesn't that mean that internet access will be required to use the app?" asks Tom Hymes at AVN. And if in-flight internet access is available, surely you could watch porn without Ryanair's pricey app. Alternatively, couldn't you simply load porn onto your iPad prior to takeoff? "What fool would actually prefer to pay the inevitable surcharge required to access Ryanporn?"