gfunkdave

I am sure I was on many flights with smoking but the only one I remember was probably around 1990, when I was 12. I remember walking from our seats to the bathroom and coughing/eyes burning as I walked through the smoking section. There was a haze in the air. This was on a BWIA flight from I think MIA to BGI.

The flight was several hours late leaving and I remember my dad joking that BWIA must stand for But Will It Arrive?

pinniped

Didn't someone try to launch an all-smoking charter in the US about a decade ago? I seem to remember news about it...they were going to do east coast and southeast routes...places like Myrtle Beach, Mobile, Atlantic City, etc.

I forget if it failed before they took a flight or if they actually completed a few flights. It did not last long.

StuckInYYZ

I forget which one, but I know one of the mainland Chinese airlines still has pilots who smoke in the cockpit... It was either China Eastern or Southern. My cousin who is allergic to cigarette smoke messaged me about it in 2019. Officially smoking is banned but close the door and they think no one will notice.

gaobest

I remember when LH SEN lounge had the smoking room. Always fascinating.

one thing smokers did for long haul flights was to use Nicolette and similar smoking cessation products because they still had nicotine benefit for those smokers who had a nicotine addiction (semi-jest) :-)

it remains of utter fascination that smoking inside public places started in my state in 1998. We have all come a long way.
just like the airlines used to give out free cigarettes, didn’t the USA government give free cigarettes to USA soldiers in combat zones during the 20th? Contrast that to a wsj article from 2003 that mentioned about USA military people who were paying $25 usd for a pack of cigarettes.

pinniped

Now whenever I travel somewhere that allows indoor smoking, I feel like I'm thrown back in time 25 years to an era when every restaurant and bar was thick with smoke. I remember when our town first banned it in restaurants and bars, they put in a weird "sporting venue" exception because the bowling alley owner was buddies with the mayor. So the bowling alley turned into a smokers' paradise for people from miles around for a few years until eventually that loophole was removed.

I remember getting free packs of cigs at casinos in the 1990s. I was not a high-roller....I'd be playing $5-10 BJ or craps and waitresses would bring them around.

I remember getting free pouches of chewing tobacco when NASCAR came to Kansas in the early 2000's. I had ZERO desire to try this product - I gave the pouches to a high-school buddy.

It's fascinating to me how much smoking was ingrained in our culture a couple generations ago and has almost disappeared today. I no longer know anyone who actively smokes beyond an infrequent cigar, and even most of the guys I used to occasionally smoke a cigar with have given it up. I have teenagers: a generation ago I would have worried about them smoking. Now they think it's disgusting and low-class. I'm sure college will bring exposure to marijuana....I mean, how could it not?...but my guess is that it'll be more edible than smokable.

gretchendz

It was awful, horribly, disgustingly bad.....especially if you were forced into a seat just in front of the smoking section...

trainman74

CurbedEnthusiasm mentioned above when U.S. airlines stopped allowing smoking systemwide. Leading up to that in the U.S., it was kind of a gradual process -- the first ban went into effect in 1988, with smoking banned on flights shorter than 2 hours (although Northwest went further at the time, banning smoking on all their flights within North America). Smoking was banned on flights shorter than 6 hours in 1990.

Here's a Northwest ad from 1988 announcing their no-smoking policy:

FlyingUnderTheRadar

The other day I was reminded of Turkish Airline flight I took in the 90s. The left side of the plane was non-smoking. The right side of the place was smoking.

Badenoch

I gave up the evil weed about 25 years ago and agree it is quite shocking when visiting a place like Serbia where public smoking in still common. I recall sitting in a smoke-filled restaurant in Belgrade a couple of years ago with the uncomfortable realization that my home and the house I grew up in once smelled exactly like it.

The last cigarette I recall having on a flight was CGD-NRT on Air France in February 1996. My smoke didn't offend many people as the plane was almost empty due to a boycott against French nuclear tests in the south Pacific.

CurbedEnthusiasm

And in the mid-90s there was usually a gradual move to going smoke-free systemwide. Delta did a global blanket ban in 1995 but the other US majors usually phased it in; typically first with select frequencies to Europe, then rolled-our to specific regions. Deep South America and Japan routes were usually the last to go non-smoking. By 1997/1998 most major carriers were completely non-smoking on all routes.

Air France took a different path. They banned in-seat smoking but set up curtained-off "smoking bars" onboard which lasted until 2000.

I traveled around Europe in 2001 and as an AvGeek I swiped every timetable I could find. Some seat maps for "lesser carriers" still showed smoking sections. LTU definitely comes to mind.

rankourabu

I only remember a couple TATL smoking flights when I was a kid in the mid 90s....

Especially on LOT, the smoking and drinking duty free lasted all night long - how people managed when they got off in the morning I simply do not know.

Wilbur

When I see photographs of restaurants and terminals from the 70s and 80s, I can still taste the second-hand smoke at the back of my tongue. Allegheny Airlines gave out tiny five- or six-cigarette packets with meals, but as a kid they would substitute Alleghany-branded golf tees on my tray.

Today, the "smokers' gestures" have been replaced with the "mobile phone fondle". Forty years ago, the familiar finger-dance with the lighter, cigarette pack, and cigarette where just so common that sometimes you could see people doing the motions with empty hands. Today, people do a similar thing with their cellphones, moving them and referring to them and shifting them about, sometimes without the phone in hand, like some sort of OCD ritual.

MiamiAirport Formerly NY George

If you want to realize how much society has been degraded think about when smoking first was restricted to certain rows then totally banned. No almost daily occurrences of disturbances or flights over not being able to smoke. No air rage because someone was prohibited from lighting up. People simply obeyed first the limitations and then the outright prohibition.

pinniped

I don't know...I've been on 2 flights that had illegal smokers. For one, the situation was handled by police on the ground upon arrival. For the other, the smoker set off the lavatory smoke detector, causing a diversion.

If you've ever wondered how fast a 737 can go from cruising altitude to on the ground when a smoke alarm goes off, it's FAST. Still the only time I've ever been to Durango, Colorado, where police boarded the plane to remove the offender.

There have actually been a lot of issues over the years with people sneaking smokes and vapes on airplanes.

jrl767

I believe emergency descent rate is on the order of 6000 ft/min