Better late than never.
On October 22, the Federal Aviation Administration eliminated the rule that required an off switch for the “no smoking” sign on planes, even though smoking on US flights officially ended decades ago.
Before the change, domestic and international flights allowed travelers to smoke while onboard despite the fire hazard, where flight attendants and passengers would take cigarette breaks, often leading to a thick haze inside the cabins.
“The rise of aviation literally parallels the rise of the cigarette,” Alan Blum, the director of the University of Alabama’s Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society, told the New York Times.
Smoking on the plane became a popular habit for many Americans, to the point that in 1973, the federal government required airlines to seat smokers and nonsmokers in separate sections. Despite the separation not doing much for anyone’s health or reducing fire hazards, passengers continued inhaling and puffing while on the plane.
However, the smoke sessions didn’t last long once lawsuits started to roll in, becoming the center of notorious tobacco lawsuits in the 1990s, impacting travelers and airline workers.
Lawyers sued tobacco companies on behalf of flight attendants suffering from the effects of secondhand smoke. The tobacco industry agreed to pay millions to fund a research institute and to support a federal smoking ban on international flights.
The FAA passed the ban in 2000, extending the regulation to permanently prevent smoking on any flight landing or departing from a US airport.
Once the FAA stopped the smoking sessions, airlines adapted to the new rules by switching on the “no smoking” sign, which “continues to be an effective reminder for the traveling public,” the agency stated.
Decades after the guidelines were codified, many airline attendants continued to manually flip the “no smoking” sign on during every flight.
However, toggling the switch back and forth caused a series of flight delays for United Airlines in February. Their new Airbus planes experienced trouble when the “no smoking” signs on board couldn’t shut off. The holdup prevented flights from taking off until the switch was fixed. The FAA later granted United’s aircraft an exemption.
Airlines and plane manufacturers found the outdated requirement to be “time-consuming and burdensome,” despite the annoyance, they fine-tuned their systems to comply with FAA rules.
“Those ‘no smoking’ signs should be always, always, always on there,” Patty Young, a former flight attendant, told the New York Times. “People still try to smoke on the airplane.”
Although people might not be lighting up on the plane with cigarettes, they have pushed their limits with vapes or e-cigarettes, a device used to inhale aerosol, described the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Previously reported by The Post, a first-class passenger forced a Texas-bound American Airlines flight to make an emergency landing in Oklahoma when he refused orders to stop vaping after takeoff.
When a flight attendant issued a warning — saying that vaping on a plane violated federal regulations — the man allegedly scoffed and accused her of making false allegations against him.
Among the 55 incidents reported through 2022, vapes and e-cigarettes accounted for 19 of them. “That’s 35% of all incidents in 2022 and triple the incidents reported in 2019,” the FAA spokesperson told Newsweek.
