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.
Smoking on Flights
Smoking wasn’t totally prohibited on all U.S. flights until 2000, The Points Guy reported. Before that, there were nonsmoking sections on flights. As the air circulated, nonsmokers could still come in contact with the smoke from the smoking section. Smoking was totally unrestricted on planes before 1971.
On most domestic flights in the United States that were over six hours long, smoking was banned 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.
Airplanes still have ashtrays in the cockpit to give people who break the smoking rule a place to safely extinguish cigarettes. Nonetheless, if caught the smoker faces a huge fine, and an arrest in some circumstances.
In 2015, the United States banned e-cigarettes on planes. They are also prohibited in checked baggage because of the fire hazard they pose.
Although these days smoking is supposedly banned on all commercial flights worldwide, some airlines based overseas pay no attention to enforcing the rule on a passenger found smoking.
Smoking is a problem on China Eastern, which is China’s second largest airline. Reports indicate flights attendants on China Eastern flights are not responsive to complaints of passengers smelling cigarette smoke. The smoke could be wafting into the cabin from the cockpit, The Points Guy reported.
Other airlines known to not enforce smoking regulations include Morocco’s Royal Air Maroc and Algeria’s Air Algerie.
Even though smoking by crew in the cockpit is permissible in some cases, Alaska Airlines takes an even more stringent stance by not hiring staff that smoke.
Only on Alaska Airlines do you still get the option to sit in the smoking section of the plane pic.twitter.com/eVTSvMxth9
— Thom Reid (@CpCuddler) December 22, 2013
In March, a man on a flight in India was allegedly caught smoking in the restroom. He tried to bribe the crew of the IndiGo flight, traveling from Goa to Delhi, after they detected smoke, but still ended up getting passed to Central Industrial Security Force personnel at the airport. He eventually ended up in the custody of Delhi Police, NDTV reported.
“From where did the passenger get to light the cigarette, because in the security check, lighter, and matchbox, etc. are not allowed?” an anonymous commenter wrote in response to the article.
People who worked as flight attendants before cigarettes were banned on flights shared their experience of working in that era, in The New York Times article.
“I remember getting off the airplane and feeling like I had to scrape off layers and layers of ick, with eyes stinging, throat hurting, and all of the other symptoms of exposure to secondhand smoke,” said Sara Nelson, the international president of the Association of Flight Attendants.
Nelson said that when passengers sneak a smoke on a flight, they usually try to disable restroom fire detectors. She described how she deals with situations like these.
“The first thing we have to do is make sure they haven’t created a fire on board the aircraft, because a lot of times they’ll throw the cigarette down into the trash bin,” Nelson said, via The New York Times article. “Then at the same time, we’re advising the passenger that they must comply and stop, and letting the cockpit know. Usually, the authorities will meet the flight when it lands.”
