It has emerged that the version of the recent James Bond film Casino Royale shown on British Airways flights
has been edited to remove references to rival airline Virgin Atlantic:
British Airways has removed a shot of Virgin Atlantic boss Sir Richard Branson from the in-flight version of the James Bond movie Casino Royale.
The British Airways edit also obscures the tail fin of a Virgin plane that was seen in the original.
As a BA spokesman points out, the airline edits many films to render them fit for in-flight viewing, and what exactly that entails is its own business. (I suspect that neither
Fight Club nor
Snakes On A Plane made it to the backs of airliner seats, for example.) I wonder how many other similar instances of product displacement have occurred on flights.
I remember hearing that all but one airline in the world cut out the sequence in "Rain Man" where Hoffman's character refuses to fly any airline except Qantas on the grounds that only they have a perfect safety record.