Who remembers the days of smoking on planes.

When did airlines in America actually end smoking on flights? Did anybody like the idea of a person smoking a cigar, pipe, or a cigarette on a closed stucture. How could you do it. I never been on a smoking flight. Do they still have smoking on inernational flights from America. I was watching the first Airport movie and seeing people smoking. I loved it when Patroni pulled a massive cigar out and chewed on it when he was getting the 707 out of the snow.

Who liked it?
Who hated It?

And some planes today don’t even have the no smoking sign on the plane. I know USAir put No Electronics on that spot instead of No Smoking. I guess it’s old and people get the point after 15-20 years or so.

I was supposedly on a OK-smoking flight when I was 1 year old, but I remember nothing about it.

As for would anyone love it, I’m a smoker but I hate sitting in smoking sections anywhere (except the bar, I chain smoke after a few Red Stripes). I’d hate to be in a pressurized metal tube with smoke. Even when I smoke, I have to have a fan on.

Also, what about laws on what you can smoke/who can smoke? Was it okay to light up a joint over the Netherlands? What about smoking a Cuban and crossing the border? And what about smoking around small children or people with oxygen?

I haven’t been on an airlines flight since then, but if I do, I’m sure glad you can’t smoke on the plane. Are there any laws/rules about spraying perfume on the plane though? Even good smells in a close space is a bad thing.

Did anyone hear anything recently about a guy trying to open the hatch up in the air to get a smoke? Pretty hard to get the lighter to work. Mine won’t even light if someone yawns across the room.

They banned it back in the mid to late 80’s I think. I was a smoker back then. We sat in the rear quarter of the plane. Five minutes after takeoff, * DING * and everyone would light-up! Couldn’t wait to get the first puff of the flight! It was smokey, uh-huh - but the smokers didn’t mind :wink:

It was a time when you could smoke just about anywhere! In the malls, in the stores, planes, trains, buses… Two places you couldn’t light-up: the gas pumps and in the hospital (because of the oxygen hazard - not for concern over 2nd-hand smoke to the patients).

I have NO idea what it was like for the non-smokers - I only quit relatively recently. I can tell you that the ban had to be far worse for the smokers than the smoking was for the non-smokers! The nicotine patch and gum was the greatest invention for the smoking flyer since the ban… Even wearing the patch, between changing planes, I’d go to the nearest smoking area and light-up! I couldn’t do an entire transcon nonstop! :smiling_imp:

I think if the flight’s origin or destination is in the US, it MUST be a non-smoking flight!

It’s been several years since I’ve been to Cancun, Mexico. I remember getting off the plane there, getting INSIDE the terminal and lighting up! Oh the dirty looks I’d get… :unamused: My reply: “We’re in MEXICO people!”, and I’d make a point of flicking my ashes in one of the numerous ash cans conveniently located around the customs and immigration areas! A few other people would look around and start lighting-up too!

My parents said it sucked. (you can tell she doesn’t smoke along with my father) I recently heard of a case where a woman smoked on a Southwest flight. She is lucky they didn’t arrest her.

In China you can smoke anywhere!

On planes or trains or The Great Wall itself, in cabs, restaurants, subways and even hospitals!

About the only place it’s banned, and enforced, is in Temples.

Not even the Forbidden City is smoke-free.

But things are changing in anticipation of the Olympics in two years and the government is cracking down mightily on that greatest of all social faux pas, spitting! There are signs in all public places entreating the hordes to refrain from hawking and spewing on whatever flat surface presents itself first. And that includes all of the aforementioned planes or trains or Great Wall, cabs, restaurants, subways and even hospitals!

There’s very little to compare to the rich, fruity, phlegmy HOIK emanating from the depths of the wrinkled and wizened 80 pound Granny on the train next to you as she plumbs the nether regions of her being to produce a multi-hued, nay, Technicolor loogie from the core of her frail body and presents it for the public’s admiration.

What’s the penalty? Caning…?

Dude - you are simply wasting your talent here! You should be writing screenplays for “Grey’s Anatomy” or “Bones” or something! That is the most awesome description of someone coughing-up a lung’r that I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading! Except I would change the word “presents” to “displays” or “exhibits”.

Worse.

CASH! On the spot.

Nothing gets the attention of the proletariat in China as much as sticking your hand in their pocket!

Why thank you.

What can I say, some days the meds work!

i think smoking was banned in 1990. All this talk has reminded me of the classic scene on the movie “Airplane!”. If anyone hasn’t seen this, the guy asks for a ticket, and the lady asks smoking or non. He replies smoking, and she hand him a ticket that is on fire.

1990 was when smoking was banned on all domestic flights of less than six hours. The ban on all flights came a few years later.

I remember smoking on a KLM flight somewhere in Europe in 1996.

Remember it well, thank God for the ban. The whole plane was the smoking section. What a joke.

This site has the whole history of the evolution of aviation’s smoking ban, beginning in 1973:

http://www.flyana.com/smoking.html

From that site come a really amusing story:

But today most pilots are on the no-smoking bandwagon. A curious incident involved a British Airways captain in Milan, Italy, who was so outraged to hear that a passenger had smoked in a lavatory on his no-smoking flight that he kept all 148 passengers onboard after landing waiting for the smoker to confess. There was no confession, but after forty minutes the airport police put a stop to the so-called “jet detention.”

That would have been an amazing sight to see.

The problem with the smoking/non-smoking section was that airlines placed smoking sections behind non-smoking sections. What should have been done was to place smoking on one side of the plane and non-smoking on the other side. Why? you ask. Because most planes have air circulation that goes from the bottom (or top?) of one side of the plane to the top (or bottom?) of the same side.

I admit I’m a smoker. I also think that the choice of smoking should be a business decision and not one to be decided by the government.

I’m almost 55 years old now but I can remember flying between Detroit and Nashville in about 1965 and being handed a 4 pack of cigarettes by the flight attendent. I smoked them. I was going to a boarding school at the time and I was in the 9th grade!