An airplane passenger lit up and started smoking a cigarette in the middle of a Spirit Airline flight to Minnesota, according to multiple reports.
According to The Sun’s report, a female passenger shot a video of the unnamed man smoking on the plane. In the video, the woman started off with footage of herself and within a few seconds, had moved to the man sitting beside her. He was seen lighting a cigarette before smoking it, and then visibly relaxing as his posture became laxer.
In the minute-long footage, a man sitting on the other side of the aisle noticed what the smoking man was doing and then called to notify the flight crew member via the call button.
The crew member patted the smoking man to let him know that smoking wasn’t legal on flights, and according to The Sun, said, “It is against the law, you do know that right?”
The smoker was heard saying, “Oh my god,” as he put his head in his hands. When he was asked to take out his boarding pass, he did, and upon landing, was met with airport police. Apparently, he did not know that smoking was illegal on flights.
The woman who shot the footage said, according to The Sun, that the smoking man was moving around all throughout the flight, and on top of that, was making loud outbursts.
She said that 40 minutes before the plane was due to land, he had laid across both his seat and the vacant one beside him with his butt facing the woman who shot the footage.
“He continued his loud outbursts and began aggressively flipping the tray open and closed, then he sat up,” she said, according to The Sun. “I saw him take the cigarettes and lighter out of his pocket.”
The moment he did so, she said that she started filming him.
Fortunately, the entire situation was resolved with little trouble as the man cooperated when he was handed over to police.
Since the 1980s, smoking begun to be banned from flights, and by the 2000s, the United States had banned smoking from all flights.
Smoking was banned on most domestic flights over six hours long on Feb. 25, 1990, The New York Times reported. The ban took place because the Association of Flight Attendants union pressured the federal government.
Ten years after that, smoking was also banned on flights between the United States and international destinations.
While most people know that smoking is banned on flights, they may not be aware that it is illegal.
In addition to normal cigarettes, vaping is also banned on flights. In 2015, the United States banned e-cigarettes on planes. They are also prohibited in checked baggage because of the fire hazard they pose.
Another Incident
A passenger caused a flight to be diverted when he became belligerent after being asked to extinguish his cigarette. He walked up and down the aisles in anger.
The April 10 Alaska Airlines flight was originally scheduled to go from San Francisco to Philadelphia. Instead, it was diverted to Chicago, where it landed at around 4:22 a.m., NBC Chicago reported.
The passenger was handed over to Chicago police, who then handed him over to federal authorities.
The plane refueled and then departed about an hour later. It landed in Philadelphia around 6:50 a.m.
NTD reporter Colin Fredericson contributed to this article.
