The In-Flight Cinema Dilemma: The Struggles of Watching a Movie on a Plane

The only time I’ve ever seen Lawrence of Arabia was on a plane to London. I know. Sacrilegious. Maybe I haven’t really seen it at all. You could argue that. Hell, I might even agree. Some films demand ceremony. They require a dark, cavernous theater, the hum of anticipation, the collective gasp when the match blows out and suddenly—there it is—the endless, unforgiving expanse of the desert. Even from a tight coach seat, with a plastic cup of syrupy cabernet sauvignon—my first legal drink, I think (I was twenty at the time on an international flight)—and the unmistakable hum of the plane and coughing, that shot still whacked me with wonder. Even now, I remember the exact awe I felt.

That moment is what cinema is all about. Watching a film on an airplane, however, is decidedly not the same experience. There’s a certain shame in admitting you watched a great film on a plane. It puts it in the same category as movies you half-watch at home while scrolling through your phone, or the ones you put on with friends, drunk at 2 a.m., talking over the best parts. But a plane is its own strange ecosystem. The movies we endure at 35,000 feet aren’t quite real. They exist in this weird limbo, competing with turbulence, the crying baby three rows back, the relentless, white-noise drone of the engines. It’s the most ADHD way to watch a movie—maybe second only to watching one on a treadmill. You’re distracted by the journey itself, by the existential weirdness of being hurled across the sky in a metal tube.

This all started with The Farewell, the 2019 A24 film directed by Lulu Wang and starring Awkwafina. A film I half-watched when it was first released, told myself I’d return to, and then proceeded to kick down the road like an unpaid parking ticket. Not because it was boring or lacked a compelling hook—far from it. This is exactly the kind of film I love: beautifully composed, steeped in small-stakes emotional grit. But life got in the way. Fatigue got in the way. And film, unlike a book or an album, demands your full attention. If you don’t have it, you won’t watch. This is why people cycle through The Office for the hundredth time—it’s safe, it doesn’t ask anything of you. Watching something new requires a certain mental bandwidth, one that I simply did not have when I first attempted The Farewell. So, naturally, I figured a long-haul flight was the perfect time to rectify that mistake. It wasn’t. Through the constant starting and stopping, the distracted peering out the window, the interruption of a flight attendant handing me a cup of coffee, trying to absorb The Farewell on a plane was like juggling on a unicycle in the dark. A losing battle. But through the misery and frustration, I did come away with some observations that might help you the next time you’re on a flight to Missouri and you’re considering watching Citizen Kane. 

Don’t Watch Citizen Kane. 

Yes, it’s on there, yes you have the time, and yes you can say you’ve seen it now. Should you watch it? Absolutely not. I should know, I did this with Lawrence of Arabia. You are not going to get what you need from this experience. This applies to any film that is made with real art and craftsmanship, classic or new. You are watching it with the aspect ratio of a portable DVD player from 2003 and two-dollar bottom-of-the-barrel headphones. Someone spent years of their life making this film, backbreaking work and emotional pain to produce something you’re going to half-watch on a red-eye to Hoboken? It’s wrong. Your saving grace is this: watch something light. Something easy, not something you’ve never seen before that you’re only going to half-remember. Re-watch things! If a movie pops up in the catalog that brings a reminiscent smile to you, watch it! It’ll bring you so much more than trying to cram in 8½ just to say you’ve seen it.

Le Film Hébétude: Judgment and Distraction on a Plane

Years ago, a very good friend of mine — musician and cartoonist Odin Coleman — was flying back to the States from Europe. Settling into the in-flight entertainment, he queued up the 2006 indie darling Little Miss Sunshine. For the unfamiliar, the film’s climax features ten-year-old Abigail Breslin performing an awkward, endearingly cringey striptease to Rick James’s “Super Freak.” It’s an uncomfortably funny, and tender emotional high point — a sweet flash in the pan moment in an indie drama-comedy. Odin, pleasantly lost in the low-stakes charm of the movie, was minding his own business, killing time somewhere over the Atlantic.

But then he noticed the guy next to him — staring. Not just glancing, but full-on staring, radiating silent judgment. To this stranger, it didn’t matter that Odin was watching a beloved Sundance-approved dramedy. All they saw was a grown man, in coach, intently watching a little girl perform a striptease. Panicked, Odin scrambled to explain the context — bumbling through a dead-end plot summary the guy didn’t ask for — only to be met with more discomfort. The damage was done. He spent the rest of the flight stewing in shame, trapped in the unforgiving purgatory of an economy-class seat.

I think about this story anytime I walk onto a plane and see just how close for comfort the seats are. You will be seen and you will be judged. It’s okay. I do it too. When I see someone laid back watching whatever their heart decides at the moment, I think: “Huh, you got three hours to kill and that's what you picked?” Not even in a judgmental way — it’s more like recognizing that I’m not alone on this plane and everyone’s making decisions here, too. It’s an odd slice of humanity, revealed in what people choose to watch while crammed into a pressurized metal tube, racing through the clouds.

I often, much like the fellow sitting next to Odin, find myself watching other people’s screens. I’ll be in F18, but somehow I’m locked in on the tiny seatback screen in D15. It’s a surreal experience watching the ending of The Devil Wears Prada or The Good, the Bad and the Ugly — no sound, twenty feet away. I won’t pretend it gives me a deeper understanding of the film, but there’s a weird, backhanded appreciation for how movies are shot when you’re forced to take them in like a voyeur. Sometimes, I’ll even pause whatever I’m watching just to catch the climax of someone else’s movie. It’s the same impulse that makes you check your phone during a show at home — except now, you’re trapped in a metal tube with hundreds of strangers, and distraction is the default state of being. The only place that matches this—-the absurd, chaotic half-engagement with art —is a warehouse gallery with a deafening DJ set. The kind where the bass reverberates through your bones, and I’m thinking, “Yeah, this is totally normal. This is exactly where I’m supposed to be right now. I’m not uncomfortable at all.” Where film is concerned, it takes a zen level of concentration to truly appreciate a movie in the landmine field of distractions that is a plane.

Crying in Coach: How a Bear in a Red Hat Broke Me

I hope I’ve made it clear by now that I don’t think air travel is the best place to absorb cinema — that it won’t evoke the right response and you’ll only get about half of what you’re meant to experience. And yet, in some paradoxical way, you’re also hyper-receptive. Maybe it’s the altitude, or the dehydration, or just the sheer boredom, but everything hits harder. A decent joke lands like the best punchline you’ve ever heard. A sentimental moment suddenly has you on the verge of tears. The movie seeps into your half-conscious state like a fever dream.
I’ve watched both Paddington films on airplanes, and it felt like a full-blown psychedelic journey. That red hat-wearing sweetheart of a bear had me weeping, contemplating my place in the vast, messy fabric of humanity, and penning love letters to family and old friends like I was coming down from an ayahuasca trip in Peru. Would this have been my experience in a movie theater? Likely not. But barreling through the sky at 500 miles an hour, it was.
The lesson here: proceed with caution when choosing your in-flight movie. And if it’s something known to be sweet — say, a London-based bear teaching a father the importance of diversity — maybe wait until you land. It might just save you from being a blubbering mess to the person sitting uncomfortably close to you in 14B.

Alaska, we have a problem

I’ve always had a soft spot for Alaska Airlines. It’s the star of Seattle travel — headquartered there, running the show in and out of Seattle-Tacoma International Airport or SEATAC. I’ve flown Alaska to LAX more times than I can count — or, when I’m lucky enough to avoid misery, to the far more civilized Bob Hope Burbank (the star of Los Angeles airports, if you ask me). I have had to suffer through many films while traveling this airway.
Alaska has betrayed me in recent years. They scrapped the seat-back screens, opting instead for a system that relies entirely on your phone. Let me be clear: watching a movie on your phone is like whisking an egg with your fingers — technically possible, but stupid and unpleasant. It’s a last-ditch effort to distract yourself from the world around you. Stuck somewhere dull? Pull out your phone and watch something. Too lazy to set up your laptop in bed? Hold your phone two inches from your face and pretend that’s a reasonable substitute. But on a plane — trapped in an upright seat, your tray table barely stable enough to hold a cup of water — being forced to watch a movie on your phone is teetering on cruelty. The screens airlines usually provide are already cramped and unbearable to stare at for any length of time. So now, craning my neck to watch a movie on a screen a sixth the size of a laptop’s? It’s unreasonable — like trying to appreciate the Taj Mahal through a keyhole.
Here I am, trying to watch The Farewell — a film that’s more than half in Mandarin with subtitles — folded up like a deck chair in a windstorm, straining to stay close enough to the screen to catch the emotional beats and drink in the cinematography. I’m reading subtitles, trying to pick up on the nuance of the language and tone, tracking the shifting family dynamics and the quiet heartbreak simmering underneath it all.
Meanwhile, the seat in front of me jolts backward without warning, a blinding streak of evening sunlight blasts through the plane’s peek-a-boo windows, and the cabin soundscape crescendos with coughing, snack wrappers, and a symphony of crying infants. Honestly, this should be an Olympic sport — endurance cinema, airplane edition.
On the topic of watching films with subtitles — if English isn’t your first language (and let’s be honest, it’s probably not for many flying in and out of the U.S.) — it must be an absolute nightmare to watch anything. The subtitles are already microscopic, seemingly designed for eyes far sharper than mine. Trying to follow a film while squinting at tiny text on a dim seatback screen — or, worse, your phone — feels less like entertainment and more like an unexpected eye exam.
The in-flight movie catalog, to its credit, is often impressive. But let’s not kid ourselves — it’s not balanced. It still leans heavily on English-language films — a spread of blockbusters, Oscar hopefuls, last year’s action leftovers, and the occasional, inexplicable Turner Classic Movies relic thrown in for good measure. If you’re hoping for something in your native tongue, good luck. The struggle isn’t just real — it’s baked into the system, a stark reminder that air travel is built for efficiency, not empathy.

My Farewell:  Be Better, or Don’t Bother.

When the airplane first became a commercial form of travel in 1914, it must've felt like a maneuver into a magical, uncharted world — the sky cracked open, and suddenly, the world was smaller. The slog of dusty roads, traversing oceans, and endless tracks gave way to a new era. One where the West Coast could be conquered in hours, not days. New York to London in a day, rather than a week. It’s hard to imagine now, in an age where this is routine, that once upon a time, it was a wild transition with little to nothing to prepare you for it. And therein lies the problem. It’s too normal now. The first passengers surely marveled at the sensation of flight, but today? You’re popping a lorazepam and praying to be unconscious before take off. Our need to travel has never been higher, but our desire to experience it — to feel it — has withered away.

Entertainment on a plane is less about enrichment and more about sedation. It’s the morphine drip that keeps passengers docile, an airborne opium den to ensure no one turns on the flight attendants. That’s why there’s booze, snacks, and every shiny distraction they can think to cram onto those tiny screens. Film, though — real film — isn’t a bell or a whistle. It’s art. Through the lens of air travel, though, it’s reduced to just another thing to pass the time. No one books a flight with the express hope of watching a film, at least I hope not.

You might ask, Jack, why do you care? Can’t you just endure the awful experience and be quiet about it? After all, you’re lucky enough to travel often. To that, I’d say: you’re right. I should shut up and be grateful for my butchered, pan-and-scan version of There Will Be Blood, cropped so aggressively that Daniel Day-Lewis is sometimes missing from the frame (which actually happened, and I’d love to know who did the edit). 

For the sake of integrity, I’ll say this: be better, or don’t bother. Make it an experience. There was a time when the film you got on a plane was the only one you’d get. If you didn’t like it, there was plenty of gin and a cigarette to keep you company. I’m not advocating for a return to smoke-filled cabins, but adding a small slice of intentional ceremony—the kind that film deserves—will go a long way. I don’t want to have to navigate the in-flight streaming service on my two-hour flight to Phoenix. I already have to do that at home. I’m tired of half-watching something while batting away every possible distraction. It makes an already uncomfortable flight feel even worse. This doesn’t seem like an impossible fix, but maybe I’m wrong.

The crash of blue and golden rays hung above a western sunset as I watched on, in awe, from my window seat on the plane. I didn’t finish The Farewell… Awkwafina, if you’re reading this: I’m sorry. Maybe someday I will finish this film, but hopefully not on an airplane.