SNAPSHOT
Inflight smoking ban Valerian Ho and Reggie Ho look at yesterday’s travel
D
o you remember the days when passengers on board commercial flights could light up and get their nicotine fix mid air? While the process that led to the eventual industry-wide smoking ban began in 1988, quite a number of major airlines did not impose the policy on all their flights until way into the 1990s, or even after. On January 1, 1988, a law in California came into effect to ban smoking on airliners, trains and buses operating within the state. Delta and Continental were the first to comply with it while PSA and United followed suit. Other carriers initially resisted it, but finally began enforcing the new law later in January.
Eventually the ban became nationwide and was extended to domestic flights of two hours or less in April 1988, and those of six hours or less in February 1990. But it was not until 2000 that the US government extended the law to all domestic and international flights. Lufthansa started testing nonsmoking flights in October 1989, but it was not until the end of March 1998 that it began offering worldwide nonsmoking flights only.
In Asia, Singapore Airlines introduced the no-smoking policy to short flights in 1988. The ban was extended to all flights of less than four hours (Hong Kong and Taipei being two of them) in 1990, to evening London flights in 1993 and then all flights, except those to and from Japan, in 1994. All Singapore Airlines flights became smoke-free in February 1998. ANA introduced the smoking ban to domestic flights from October 1998, and to international flights on March 28, 1999.
Smoking in the cabin of a Lufthansa Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condo (1938-1944)
74 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015
Cathay Pacific began introducing non-smoking flights in 1990, while Thai Airways formally implemented the policy in 2000. n
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