Smoking on planes has been banned for years. So why are there still ashtrays?
smoking sections because everybody smoked everywhere. And I mean everywhere: with kids in the car, in cinemas, buses, trains, McDonald's (and everyone else's) restaurants, maternity wards, doctors' clinics, supermarkets, lifts, bathrooms, classrooms and aeroplanes. Pretty much the only place you couldn't smoke was at the petrol pump. Even kids like me got in the act, 'smoking' ever-popular candy cigarettes. (It made me look cool and grown-up, just like Dad. And Steve McQueen!)
Then slowly, sympathy for long-suffering non-smokers drove momentum for areas set apart for smokers.
Cinemas reserved the balcony or side sections, their smoke swirling in the light of the projector. My
high school even had a students' smoking section! 'Smoking or non?' became the standard greeting when you entered a restaurant. (But as George Carlin said, 'Isn't making a smoking section in a restaurant like making a peeing section in a swimming pool?')
Passengers light up on a Transocean Air Lines Boeing 377 Stratocruiser in the mid-1950s.
And then, radically, in 1971, courting great controversy, United Airlines created the first smoking section on planes. The
tobacco industry was livid. Smokers marginalised! A publicity exercise! What a concept – a loosely curtained-off ghetto at the rear of the plane was somehow supposed to hermetically protect the non-smokers and seal off the smokers and their haze from all but the back few rows of the plane. To be fair, to a certain extent, it worked – most of the smog stayed at the back, leaving only the smokers back there gasping for breath. Anyway, an improvement.
I remember well that there was a hack: to avoid getting stuck in the noxious smoking section, nicotine addicts would book non-smoking seats (so they wouldn't have to inhale everyone else's cigarettes through the entire flight). Then when they were finally desperate for a smoke, they'd simply do a 'Sorry, Babe, back in a minute', slink back to the smoking section and slip through the curtains. They'd light up and slouch there guiltily in the aisle, huffing down a fag before returning to the relative purity of the non-smoking section.
In 1990, Hong Kong's Cathay Pacific was the first airline in Asia to introduce non-smoking flights. Photo: SCMP Archives
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
South China Morning Post
3 days ago
- South China Morning Post
US begins organ-transplant reform as ‘signs of life' found before some retrievals
The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has launched a reform of the organ-transplant system and threatened to close a major procurement body after a probe found premature attempts to start organ retrieval while patients showed signs of life. The investigation conducted by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), a division of HHS, examined 351 cases where organ donation was authorised but not completed. It found 73 patients had shown neurological signs incompatible with organ donation and at least 28 patients may not have been deceased at the time organ procurement was initiated, the HHS said in a statement on Monday. The probe also found evidence of poor neurologic assessments, questionable consent practices, and misclassification of causes of death in several cases, the agency said.
South China Morning Post
6 days ago
- South China Morning Post
US man dies after being yanked into MRI machine while wife was getting scan
A man who was pulled into an MRI machine in New York after he walked into the room wearing a large chain necklace has died, according to police and his wife, who told a local television outlet that he waved goodbye before his body went limp. The man, 61, had entered an MRI room while a scan was under way on Wednesday afternoon at Nassau Open MRI. The machine's strong magnetic force drew him in by his metallic necklace, according to a release from the Nassau County Police Department. He died Thursday afternoon, but a police officer who answered the phone at the Nassau County police precinct where the MRI facility is located said the department had not been given permission to release the name on Saturday. Adrienne Jones-McAllister told News 12 Long Island in a recorded interview that she was undergoing an MRI on her knee when she asked the technician to get her husband, Keith McAllister, to help her get off the table. When he got close to her, she said, 'at that instant, the machine switched him around, pulled him in and he hit the MRI'. 'I said: 'Could you turn off the machine, call 911, do something, Turn this damn thing off!'' she recalled, as tears ran down her face. 'He went limp in my arms.'
South China Morning Post
7 days ago
- South China Morning Post
How to start strength training? Tips on weights, machines, bands and more for beginners
When it comes to weight-resistance exercise, you can choose free weights such as dumbbells or barbells, or weight machines, which are often driven by cables or levers. You can also use resistance bands or tubes to build strength, or try push-ups and pull-ups – old standbys that create muscle overload by using your own body weight. These four basic options for strength training present fitness possibilities for young and old, advanced and beginners. And they offer flexibility for use in the gym, your home or in a hotel room during travel. You will probably wind up using a combination of the four, and they all have their pros and cons. They are appropriate for all ages and can be augmented with aerobic exercises like walking or running – or even climbing stairs US-based experts Dr Rafael Escamilla, a biomechanist and physical therapist at Sacramento State University, and Dr Michael Stone, a sports scientist at East Tennessee State University, walk us through the possibilities and their pluses and minuses, depending on your age, motivation and goals. Both are former competitive weightlifters who still work out almost daily.
