Cigarette lighter and ash trays

francisco collazos

francisco collazos

Pre-takeoff checklist
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I can't help to notice ash trays and cigarette lighters in some of these old planes (i.e. cherokee, Cessna). Did people really fly cross country and smoke in the plane? Does anyone have any experience or stories about this?
 
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They sure did on the airlines.
 
Yes. I did my instrument training while having to peer at the instruments through a cockpit full of smoke.
 
Certainly did back in the day. My instructor and examiner both smoked (1981). When I was in college, people even smoked in class. We had these little foil ashtrays all over the place.
 
I think all planes built in the 70's had them. That, and no headsets, high lead gas, ADF, Loran, and "King" or "Collins" everywhere.

But the cigarette lighter does offer a scalable way to get power to your tablets and whatnot. Its easier to change an adapter from Amazon to the latest UCB C, higher wattage, etc. than permanently installing an expensive UCB outlet that will be obsolete in a few years.
 
Yeah - I remember when I got out of college and at my first job having to ask for "non smoking" when buying airline tickets in the 80's. Work? No such thing as a smoking area or even non smoking offices. People just lit up at their desks. When I was young the only place I didn't see smoking was at church.
 
francisco collazos said:
Did people really fly cross country and smoke in the plane?
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And in helicopters, airlines, etc. I can still remember when domestic carriers went no smoking back in the 90s and I switched to national carrier who still did for my trips to SA.
 
WDD said:
Yeah - I remember when I got out of college and at my first job having to ask for "non smoking" when buying airline tickets in the 80's.
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…and there was this cloud of smoke that rolled forward from the back of the airplane as soon as the “no smoking” sign was turned off.
 
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Heck, the airline pilots lit up as well. You could tell because the cockpit door was sometimes open.

And.... this joke makes no sense to a lot of people today because they never heard of a smoking section on an airplane.


airplane-smoking.gif
 
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The smoking/non-smoking sections in airliners was dynamic - it just depended on how many of each type of tickets were sold. God forbid you get a seat in the last rows of non-smoking.

Used to smoke cigars during sales meetings and 1:1 performance reviews.

I flew with a number of glider pilots who smoked while they raced. You knew my friend J had made a low save and had a thermal centered when he lit up. My friend F used to tap his ashes out of the side vent and they would leave a grey mustache on his fin. Go figure.


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My DPE smoked during my private ride. Before I decided to be a quitter I smoked in an airplane once or twice. Might have even lit up on a Boeing once or twice…
 
I am 58 and remember as a kid the cloud in the back of airliners. Probably the last 10-12 rows. And the non-smoking section started with a row right in front of the last smoking row - no way in the world to keep the smoke back in the non-smoking section!

I remember the uproar when they cut out smoking for airliners. You would have thought that the doubled ticket prices or something.

You have to remember though that in the 1970's and 80's that the WW2 generation were only in their 40's and 50's and that was a very smoking oriented generation. Huge numbers of them smoked. My grandparents definitely did.

Luckily by the time I graduated from college in the late 1980's smoking was outlawed in office buildings. I never had to work around it, but I can remember the groups of workers huddled outside in the cold smoking. Looked miserable to me
 
In the 1980's. the club forbid smoking in the planes, and vacuum gyro replacements/overhaul went from 1 or 2 years, to 5 years or more. Nicotine and other by products quickly gummed the bearings.

Electric gyro's were unaffected, as they were sealed.
 
I can remember being very careful that I didn't drop my smoke while flying my Aeronca Champ. The butt would have gotten past the floor boards into the oily belly.
That was long ago. I've been smoke free for 40+ years.
 
pmanton said:
I can remember being very careful that I didn't drop my smoke while flying my Aeronca Champ. The butt would have gotten past the floor boards into the oily belly.
That was long ago. I've been smoke free for 40+ years.
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One of the few ADs on my Maule was the addition of a “NO SMOKING” placard.
 
Spaces on ships went HARD IFR during general quarters and such. Enough so your eyes would burn! That was the late 80s.
 
I played in a rock band in the 1970's and 1980's...my guitar case still smells like cigarettes and beer whenever I open it up. Try playing and singing 4 sets with your eyes running on account of smoke...the girls thought I was really cool when tears flowed as I sang a ballad...never told them any different :).

Got my private in 1973... my instructors smoked..so did my examiner when I took my check ride.
 
In the 70s I had to fly commercial with my parents when our destination outpaced the family Cherokee 140.

The smoke was thick.

I remember a guy with a Cessna (172/182?) next to our hangar that never stopped smoking. Even when refueling.
 
On my first airplane flight, about maybe 1963, airline meals came with a small pack (4-5) of cigarettes. Go figure.

Tim
 
On my 1st job out of college, the old man in the cubical next to me was a chain smoker. The cubicals were the low type....maybe 5ft tall but probably less. Sometimes when he'd get busy talking or whatever he'd have as many as three lit at once.... This was in VA...and he had a friend that worked for philip morris and would give him freebies all the time.
Most of the time it was no big deal....everyone was used to smoke in public spaces...but once in a while he'd get some odd cigarette brand that would literally take my breath away...oh man it was horrible!
 
steingar said:
The most ironic thing is smoking, as expensive as it's become, it largely confined to poor people.
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But then you have the rich white guys and their cigars, which can be more expensive than cigarettes.
 
MauleSkinner said:
Looked like a bunch of high school kids sneaking out for a smoke to me. ;)
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We didn't have to sneak outside. There were designated smoking areas in my high school (outside in one of the courtyards).
 
flyingron said:
We didn't have to sneak outside. There were designated smoking areas in my high school (outside in one of the courtyards).
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Same here. At one high school I attended, they had big ash trays next to the school entrances.
 
One lesson this non-smoker got from smoking is just how well a O2 concentrator works for supplemental Oxygen in my plane.

(Keeps 2 above 90% up to 15k)


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Doug Reid said:
Same here. At one high school I attended, they had big ash trays next to the school entrances.
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There was a courtyard at our hi school where the teachers and students could smoke during lunch breaks. Many smoked pot and the class rooms would stink like pot and nothing was ever done about it. This was 1977.

I know of 2 heavy smokers from my family that died early from heavy smoking.

The avionics shop put my headsets jacks in where my ash trays used to be in my 172, I was good with that since I don't smoke.
 
In most schools when I was growing up, the teacher's lounge was really the smoking area for staff.
 
When I was in high school in the late '70s, smoking on campus was strictly forbidden for students. School officials were under orders from the school superintendant to come down hard on student smoking.

However,.....

One day the principal called an assembly of all the seniors in the school auditorium. He railed against the students for smoking, gave us grief for the restrooms being filled with cigarette smoke, and told us he would not tolerate smoking by students. Any student caught smoking would face harsh penalties. THEN, he told us that despite his best efforts to stop smoking, there was one particular courtyard in the middle of the school where it would be nigh on impossible for him or any teacher to see or catch a student who was smoking.

And that's how the school got its unofficial student smoking area.
 
Russian cigs had a distinctly different smell, for some reason. Aeroflot had a BO & cig smell that was unique.
 
I flew to New York when I was 21, 1990 smoked all the way. We used to go to the back of the plane and grab a seat to smoke. Seems unbelievable now but in those days just normal. By the end of the flight all the smokers knew each other, great fun...
 
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