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Comment by cjrp | Hacker News Reader

Smoking on airplanes is the one that just seemed like an accident waiting to happen. And yet there were (relatively) few incidents caused by cigarettes.

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I heard that air quality on planes was better back then (maybe someone who was alive then can confirm). Because of smoking they had to ventilate the whole aircraft much better. While these days I feel like they are just starving us for oxygen so as to not have to heat up fresh air.

Old person here. I think it's really hard to convey the extent to which smoke literally permeated everything. It's not just the immediate air quality aspects of it, but there was just a residue on all the surfaces, every cushion and fabric held onto the stuff.

I can recall the week that no-smoking indoors at restaurants/bars passed and it was literally shocking to walk into a place and not have it be hazy. It really felt weird.

Anyway, air quality + quality of life was much worse. Sometimes the future does get better.

Another old person here. At an office in Zurich I saw a layer of smoke filling the upper reaches of the atrium. I wondered how many working (i.e. smoking) hours it would take before it reached the balcony on which I was standing.

except for the dance bars. Dear lord the sweat smell during the transition was bizarre. It as always masked thanks to the smell of smoke. I think a lot places had to start thinking about adding nice parfumes, because almost at the end of that first year of zero tolerance inside bars, it was 'solved'.

I had also heard that during regular aircraft inspections, the residue from cigarette smoke made small cracks and such in the airframe obvious.

Today that sounds to me like urban folklore (or Big Tobacco folklore).

Lol. I was 14 when I took a long distance international flight on a 747 in 1979. The family was sitting in the “non-smoking section”. I can tell you for a fact that the air quality in that plane was terrible. Possibly because a number of passengers in the non-smoking section still deigned to smoke. Whaddaya do eh?

There seems to be a door smoker effect to this day, where smokers are drawn to smoke just inside of the areas you aren't supposed to smoke.

It's an addiction, they're compelled to smoke, and so at the edges of the area they'll light up.

That's how the Kings Cross Fire started. Escalator full of potential fuel, smoker drops a used match, it falls inside the machine, fire. It wasn't legal technically to be smoking on that escalator, but it would have been legal in a few paces so "everybody" did it. The investigators found signs that such fires had likely started or almost started many times before, the disaster was just that this time it burned for long enough to create a pool of extremely hot gas flowing up the inclined ceiling for the escalator, and we got to discover the Trench Effect in the least fun way possible.

I flew to Japan from US in the "non smoking section" and which the smoking section started in the row immediately behind me... A woman smoked in the seat behind me most of the trip.

Nope, not better quality if you don't like the smell of cigarettes.

The airplanes were awful, usually with silly little signs stuck in some seats to designate the switchover which the smoke didn't seem to respect. I was in a train brought back to service from smoking times a few years ago and the stench still emanating from the fabric seats brought back those memories right away.

Turns out using less engine bleed air is good for fuel economy, so now it's 50% recirculated HEPA filtered (which does nothing for the co2 contents) air.

How does this work for all-electric planes like the 787?

Or smoking a cigar in an oxygen rich spacecraft cabin, as per the opening scene of the original Planet of the Apes (released in Feb 1968, after the Apollo 1 fire in Jan 1967).

Even the hindenburg had a smoking lounge! Included a bunch of extra tech to make that less dangerous in a giant explosive balloon.

https://www.airships.net/hindenburg-smoking-room/

I like how they still have the ash trays in the bathroom. I get it, throwing the heater into the paper towel trash is a recipe for disaster. But still, the idea of taking a poop in this tiny little uncomfortable bathroom with 5 people waiting for you and sitting there demolishing an entire cigarette while you do it is sort of hilarious in its desperation.

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