United Just Grounded Fleet of Planes Because Its No Smoking Signs Don't Turn Off
viewfromthewing.com
viewfromthewing.com
airline just missed requesting an exception from an ancient, no longer relevant rule the FAA should change(smoking signs need to be able to be turned of by the crew)
Habitual smokers were never over 50% in America - look it up.
And 2 out of 3 of them died from causes unrelated to smoking.
So it goes.
I mean, OK, 2 thirds didn't die from smoking. But 1 third DID. So basically you're saying that since smoking only killed one-in-three, it somehow wasn't the big deal people made it out to be?
And that's -before- we discuss the non-fatal health issues of the other 2 thirds? Or the health issues of non-smokers exposed to second hand smoke.
I remember the 80's. Smoke everywhere, all the time. On planes, trains, busses - in restaurants, pubs, offices. I do not miss that.
1 in 3 died. Troops landing on D-Day had better odds of survival.
Stats on this really only go back to 1965, when pretty close to half of US adults smoked. But that’s 15 years after the link between cancer and smoking was established, it’s after doctors had gone from endorsing smoking to testifying against it, and after the ban on advertising smokings “health benefits”.
I’d be very surprised if less than half of US adults smoked in the early 50s and prior. The only thing I imagine could confound that would be the fact that women were quite a bit less likely to smoke than men were, but even in the earliest statistics available about 1/3 of them did.
The bigger issue of course is presenting smoking as being a personal choice. That's only the case if smoking in no way impacts anyone else, which is not the case. Workers in industries where smoking was permitted show many of the symptoms regular smokers get, regardless of their personal smoking habits (70% according to https://www.fightcancer.org/policy-resources/effects-secondh...). e.g. a personal acceptance of choosing to smoke and saying "I accept the risk of smoking related illness" is similar to saying "I accept the risk of driving while drunk" in that it acknowledges the risk of harm to the person making the choice, but disregards the impact of that choice on everyone else.
Given: Aircraft power is on, signs are on. Aircraft power is off, signs are off. Aircraft power is operable by the flight crew.
Therefore: Signs are operable by the flight crew.
In addition to the aircraft main power system(s), there's almost certainly a circuit-breaker that would turn the signs off. It might turn other things off as well, and circuit-breakers are not generally designed to be used regularly as switches, but there's a circuit breaker in reach of the crew that would turn those signs off.
Does anybody know if the no-smoking sign is used for any sort of signaling? (I doubt it because it doesn't make a noise, like the seatbelt signal. But, it might!)
It seems like a valuable test to check if there are more difficult to errors lurking elsewhere.
Forgetting to ask for a waiver, nah I don't see it.
It's not United's entire fleet, as the headline implies. It's just their (relatively small) collection of Airbus A321neo planes.
The signs are not faulty. They're deliberately hardwired on, as they are in United's Boeing planes.
"The airline’s Boeing 737, 757, 767, and 777 aircraft already have no smoking signs “hardwired to stay illuminated at all times” according to the filing. United just forgot to ask for the same regulatory waiver for the A321neo as for these aircraft. This is a new plane type for the airline. They have 5 currently in service."
I wonder if our space tourism rockets will have no smoking signs in the cabins.
Airbus and Boeing both make significant customizations for each airline. Some have entirely custom seating configurations. An ash tray is nothing. The reason they're on the plane is safety requirements.
The least efficient plane[0] burns 1 gallon per passenger every 64 miles. A 3,000 mile flight will burn 47 gallons of fuel per passenger.
A stick of gum can be up to 7 grams[1]. Let's assume it's even heavier once chewed, and is a nice, round 10 grams.
If we assume the mean passenger weighs only 50kg (or, 5,000 pieces of gum), then each piece of gum is responsible for 9.4 milligallons of fuel for that trip. Or 1.2 fl-oz.
Now if we consider that there is gum all over the plane, maybe a soda-can's worth of jet fuel is burned up ferrying it all around. But that's with optimistic passenger weights, pessimistic gum masses, a gas-guzzler of a jet, and probably a calculation error I've made converting between all the different units above.
:)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_aircraft#Airli...:
> On the other side, the least efficient was British Airways at 27 pax-km/L (3.7 L/100 km [64 mpg‑US] per passenger), using fuel-inefficient Boeing 747-400s with a low density of 0.75 seat/m2 due to a high 25% premium seating, in spite of a high 82% load factor.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chewing_gum#Product_varieties
> Chewing gum can come in a variety of formats ranging from 1.4 to 6.9 grams per piece, and products can be differentiated by the consumers' intent to form bubbles or the sugar/sugarless dichotomy.
No they didn't. Aircraft are still legally required to have ashtrays, at the very least, in the bathrooms.
Apparently airlines started banning smoking in the 1980s, but an industry ban was enacted in 2000. Maybe this will be the decade they decide to pull the ashtray requirement.
So it’s important that flight crew can still operate the signs, for when that day comes.
Smoking on the airplane! It was a golden age of travel.
Not sure if this is 100% true or they were just bullshitting, but they explained Michigan's smoking laws were intended to protect employees who were required to be around it all the time. They claimed that if you had a privately owned establishment with no employees you could allow it.
Didn't really care to fact check them at the time but always pondered on this.
This place in particular was only open 3 or 4 days a week and basically 5pm - close, sometimes just for the dart league. Single old guy who probably didn't need the income.
They had good burgers though.