I was recently on a flight where a man was caught smoking a cigarette in the lavatory of our flight. Needless to say, the situation was a lot of drama.
As a journalism student in Iowa (and a non-smoker) I found this to be a great topic for a magazine article for one of my classes. So I'm writing about how smoker's cope with flying long (or short!) distances without being able to smoke.
I was wondering if anyone has any stories or experience with this issue. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

I quite a couple of years back, but I used to let my nicotine addiction drive some travel choices -

I would often choose connections via smoker-friendly airports rather than non-stops. So, for example connect through NRT when going to/from asia. Domestically I would choose smoker-friendly airports to connect through; some airports have easy access to get outside even where no smoking is allowed indoors, whereas others make it very difficult.

I would chew nicotine gum on long flights.

I would hang around outside security until the last possible moment - availability of elite security lanes thus becomeing an important factor.

I continue to boycott all Marriott group hotels for their chain-wide ban on smoking rooms. I always regarded mysleft as a considerate smoker, and would never smoke in a non-smoking room. I recognize that in some hotels there is no way to provide smoking rooms that don't severely impact non smokers - but in many cases this is perfectly practical, and Marriott's decision to treat the 10-20% of their customers who smoke in such a contemptuous manner really annoyed me - and continues to do so even though it doesn't affect me any more.

*Wood is smoke free in North America and is on their way to be so worldwide!

I quit smoking before the increases in airport security.. so my expereince there is out of date.. but I too would only go "in" at the last minute too..

...and chew nicotine gum on the actual flight.

If it is of any interest, I actually QUIT largely due to the "pain" of managing the flights... When ones "usual" flight is SYD-LAX it meant anything up to 16-17 hours between smokes...

Quitting, naturally, removed the problem.... the thought of suffering on the flight next time was quite a help in staying off tobacco!

Bet I'm not the only one on FT to do that!

Yes, definitely. Long flights aren't the only reason to quit smoking, but my decision to quit was when smoking flights started disappearing around 2000. For a few years, you could still manage by flying some holdouts like JAL and Saudia where possible, but by 2002-2003, even these were gone and I quit for good.

I saw someone chewing tobacco on a flight recently; I guess that's one way smokers cope with addiction..

Don't smoke onboard, never have.
Do smoke in the hotel room if it is a smoking room.

Most of my flights are less than 10 hours, so even after clearing security if I'm in a non-smoking airport, it will be around 10-12 hours (including boarding, flight and clearing immigration/luggage/customs) before my next cigarette. I get a little grumpy and the first thing I want is a smoke when I can to an outdoor location, but otherwise, it's not that hard for me. Tried a patch once but it left a rash so I gave up that option.

mcolsen, welcome to FlyerTalk!

Hope you get some good feedback here that you can use and we hope to see you in this and other FT forums in the future.

I use either Nicorette or Commit on long flights and it works like a charm.

Although it's hard to enforce, most airlines (or maybe it's the FAA) also ban smokeless tobacco. I've noticed this in the back of most of their in-flight magazines, usually in very small print in the area about what stuff you can't do on a flight.

I quit over a decade ago now, but I still remember being on an extremely long flight (TLV-MIA) when I still smoked, and being in the back of the plane with the rest of the smokers. At times if you looked back from the middle of the plane you couldn't see to the far back because of all the smoke.

I couldn't imagine smoking on board nowadays though.

Welcome to FT!

If you do a search in this forum, you will find a lot of threads related to smoking and airplanes.

http://flyertalk.com/forum/showthrea...hlight=smokers

http://flyertalk.com/forum/showthrea...hlight=smokers

There are certain situations I associate with smoking,being on a plane isnt one of them I(only flew on a smoking flight once) so I dont have a problem with TATL flights, until a year or so ago you could smoke at LHR and I still miss that, by and large I manage fine, after about 5 hours I do fancy a smoke but ignore it. when I only flew occasionally I used nicotine gum but it really gives you heartburn and stomach pain so I give it a miss now.

It doesn't really bother me when I am on the plane...but as soon as I get off the plane, the first thing I want is to smoke. As far as hotel rooms, I usually get a non-smoking room anyways....otherwise the smell just permeates your clothes bad enough that even I, as a smoker, can't stand!

I've heard that Iran Air still allows to smoke during the flight.