3 ms·

I (legally) smoked on a plane!

• dilap 5y ago
  smoking on a plane sounds like simultaneously the most wonderful and most terrible thing ever similarly it was amazing to smoke in bars, but it's great to not have smoke filled bars
  • varjag 5y ago
    I mean it does sound crazy to me now. But back then it was just a fact of life that both smokers and non-smokers didn't spend much thought on. I flew before I picked up smoking myself, and it didn't really feel something unusual, precisely because it was common everywhere. There have to be other daily habits now that going to be seen as disgusting in a few decades too. Maybe things like eating non-cloned meat.
    • don-code 5y ago
      Common in restaurants as well. It's downright bizarre to think about now, but I remember as a child, at family restaurants like Friendly's and Howard Johnson's (which itself is an anachronism), being asked by a cheery-faced hostess whether we wanted "smoking or non-smoking".
    • conductr 5y ago
      It was interesting especially juxtaposed on current reality. I hated smoking (ok I hated 2nd hand smoke as a non-smoker). But somehow, it was the right of the individual to smoke; when, where, and how they pleased. It didn't matter that other people in the space shared the air. Compared to present when the world is looking to bend over backwards to avoid putting smoke in someone else's air on a plethora of different topics. Many, that I've never contemplated. Like, for instance, I never thought I could get yelled at for using what I thought to be the correct pronoun while saying "yes sir, thank you". I'd think they'd just recognize my attempt canned politeness and say "you're welcome" and recognize why people think of them as a "sir" during casual brief interactions (because they were wearing men's clothes & had facial hair).
    • FroshKiller 5y ago
      I assure you non-smokers spent plenty of thought on it.
      • varjag 5y ago
        You don't need to assure me, I had a chance to experience it first hand both as a non-smoker and as a smoker.
  • tnolet 5y ago
    Oh boy. Was on a school trip to Greece in the mid nineties. ~35 teenagers and some teachers as guides and chaperones. We were 16+ so basically drinking free booze on the plane while smoking our hearts out. We actually drank all the beer on the plane. It looked like a smoke bomb went off. It must have been the flight from hell for other passengers. Completely unimaginable right now. Thank you Sabena Airlines for this core memory of my youth and not having us arrested in Athens.
  • kodablah 5y ago
    Smoking in bars still exists in many places in the US. Granted in Texas for example, in jurisdictions where it's still legal, seems like at least 90% choose not to allow it by choice of the business owner.
  • wrycoder 5y ago
    Smoke smells different on a plane, for some reason.
  • discordance 5y ago
    You can still do that in Japanese bars and restaurants
• macdice 5y ago
  Some time in the 90s I caught what I was told was Alitalia's last smoking flight from Australia to Italy before it was phased out. Christ, it was horrendous. There was a smoking section up the back of the plane, but try telling that to the smoke. It was like being fumigated for 24 hours. Hard to believe that was real now!
• ineedasername 5y ago
  I know that's the way we say it, but maybe I've seen Airplane too many times to ignore the potential difference between literal and figurative for anything plane-related. So I just pictured you taking a drag, wind in your hair, sitting on the wing of the plane and yet somehow not falling off as it went along it's way.