I visited the restroom on a flight last night, SEA-LGB. When I came back I had about two seconds of near-panic as I smelled smoke in the cabin. Forgot to update my will, damn. Then two quick checks: the engines sounded great and the smoke itself smelled earthy, organic, not synthetic or electric.

Looked around, and just about the entire cabin was also reacting, and I said loudly: "tabacco."

About two minutes later several FAs came back and basically told the young lady sitting immediately in front of me that she was busted, that the cops would meet her on the ground, and it would be best if she told the truth. She had gone up to the FC cabin to smoke, and now the whole plane really stunk. I usually don't mind the smell of cigarettes, but this was pretty irritating for some reason.

When we landed there were ~five cops waiting to deal with this security crisis. I was really pleased to see my tax money being used so well.

I overheard someone else say she was sixteen. I think I saw her waiting for baggage later.

So I'm curious about one thing: was she fined, or do they ever let people off with a warning in cases like this? Is there any public incident report that we could look up?

-KF