Edgier movies aloft? Yeah, that’s the ticket

COMING soon to a flight near you: “Snakes on a Plane”?

Not likely.

You probably won’t find the Samuel L. Jackson fang fest as part of your in-flight entertainment, or IFE, as it’s called in the trade. Nor will you see movies filled with nudity or violence, flicks about terrorism or talkies that have political or anti-U.S. themes. Plane crashes also end up on the cutting-room floor for entertainment aloft.

But as more airlines offer individual TVs rather than one-movie-fits-all overhead screens, many are rethinking their policies on what’s suitable.

“Historically, airlines have pretty much picked movies on the basis of ‘how do you not offend anyone,’ ” said Joan Vincenz, managing director of product marketing for Delta. “You end up with all these cartoon movies or ‘The Shaggy Dog.’ ” But with seatback movies on demand, “You can go a lot edgier.”

Facing financial woes, Delta has been figuring out what’s really important to its customers and how to set itself apart. One finding: Delta fliers want “a variety of intelligent, witty, entertaining content,” Vincenz said.

On some flights, they’ll get a new digital Delta entertainment system featuring individual monitors in coach and first class, with free access to 24 Dish satellite network TV channels, an audio system that lets passengers create their own playlist, video games and a choice of five movies (free in first class, $5 in coach).

Passengers also can compete against one another in a trivia game. The entertainment is available on all flights between New York-JFK and the West Coast on refitted former Song Boeing 757s and will be offered by mid-2008 on all Delta flights of four hours or longer.

If you don’t always want to be in your own world, you can be in someone else’s on Virgin America, the San Francisco-based carrier that’s hoping to roll out a fleet of 10 Airbus A320s this summer, pending Department of Transportation approval. Options on its entertainment system, dubbed Red, will include seat-to-seat chatting.

“If you’re in 22A and I’m in 18B, you’re able to send me messages in flight,” said Charles Ogilvie, Virgin America’s director of in-flight entertainment and partnerships. (If you’re in 18B and don’t want to chat, you can block 22A.)

There are also chat rooms where passengers can converse electronically about what they’re watching.

Movies won’t be edited, he said, and “we’re definitely not going to rule out a particular film or a risky film to play in flight.”

Not so with some airlines, where in-house teams select and contract for in-flight films and others use services such as Spafax or Pace Communications to schedule, acquire and deliver movies that film distributors have edited for airlines.

Still others are committed to a single film studio.

Passengers see only 20th Century Fox films on low-cost carrier JetBlue, which also offers 36 channels of DirecTV live programming. Eric Brinker, director of brand management and customer experience, and his team choose these films, for which passengers pay $5.

“We do show some PG- and R-rated movies,” Brinker said. Films are not edited for violence, language or sex, he said, but JetBlue won’t show frontal nudity “based on customer feedback.”

JetBlue has shown two films with Oscar luster -- Fox’s “The Last King of Scotland” and “Little Miss Sunshine,” both R-rated. Airline passengers typically get to see films about a month after they’re in theaters and usually before they come to DVD.

At British Airways, “Content that is culturally or politically provocative will be avoided,” said Dee Brady, BA’s entertainment and media manager, although BA did show “The Queen,” which doesn’t portray Queen Elizabeth in an altogether flattering light. (“It was a British movie ... historical fiction, but a bit of British history and British culture,” said John Lampl, a BA spokesman. “Plus, it’s just a very good movie.”)

But you won’t see “Superman Returns” (protracted scenes of passengers in distress), “Red Eye” (homicidal passenger menaces his seatmate), “Snakes on a Plane” or “United 93.”

Even watered-down versions of some films don’t make the cut with some carriers. American Airlines thought “Mission Impossible 3,” even with edits, “was too violent for the main screen,” said Jennifer Clark, American Airlines’ program manager for in-flight entertainment.

Is a flier going to choose airline X over airline Y because X has better entertainment? All other things (such as price and schedule) being equal, it could matter, so don’t forget to pack the popcorn.

beverly.beyette@latimes.com