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Doesn’t surprise me at all… It was in florida
Gotcha. Makes sense. I’m always doing the Gotta Get Away fares, super cheap fare. Next time, I’ll be seated in the lavatory! But I promise, I won’t light up, haha!
She gets on a plane with no luggage and lights up before takeoff?
Do you need any more proof that it was all theater?
But luckily, she learned her lesson because there are consequences to… Well, I guess she’ll do it again tomorrow, then.
I find that for most flights I can consistently get mid-A (15+) by mashing the check-in button in the app on the exact second the clock turns over on the start of the 24h window. The clock needs to be an online one, not your wall clock, so that you have the same :00 second as Southwest’s servers. A spots less than 15 are all preferred fliers, people who paid for early boarding and such so you can’t get in that range anyway.
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There was usually a pretty big olfactory difference between the smoking and non-smoking sections, even when getting on the plane. And if one was unfortunate enough to get stuck in smoking (as I often was), and a reasonable fraction of the section was actually smoking (as was always the case on the transatlantic flights I was taking too often in those days), you could definitely smell the difference when people started to light up.
Right, I’d forgotten that and hadn’t noticed the bit about taxiing to the gate.
I encountered this when I first moved to England, and was gobsmacked. By that time the practice had long been abandoned in the US, at least in the theaters I used to go to.
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Yeah, my wife tried that last time, got B11 or so, which isn’t bad. We’re doing more flying since kid went off to college 400 miles away, so we’ll have plenty of opportunities to test it.
Funny thing on SWA, as part of the in-flight announcements, they are preemptively asking people to behave. I’m saddened they have to do that, but they’re good natured, borderline funny about it.
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Uh, I dont know about that.
But I do remember when smoking was permitted, on some airlines they would designate the very last 2 rows as nonsmoking and it was an ineffective joke. (Why even bother?)
Maybe so they wouldn’t have people blowing smoke directly at the back of their head?
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When smoking was common, I tolerated it fairly well because it was always present. After they banned it in restaurants here, I started becoming much more sensitive to the point I stopped going to bars where it was still permitted because of the stench. I’d imagine if it became a common thing in indoor spaces again, my tolerance of it would go back up, but I’d much rather just breathe clean air.
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My wife and I on our honeymoon booked a flight to Maui from Honolulu. Some dude definitely toked up in the bathroom on the way. It was 11am. Nobody seemed bothered at all.
Hawaii is a different world man.
Yes–that is how it works. If you aren’t already A-List status from frequent flying, you can pay extra for early check-in. Since I bounce in and out of A-List, I will pay the extra fee, which my AmEx refunds me anyway. Crap. I’ve said too much already.
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Not getting arrested probably isn’t the end of the consequences for her. The airline will be required to report the incident to the FAA, who can then fine her. Although the process seems to take a while, the FAA is all about huge fines this year. Maybe she’ll be hit with whatever the highest is? I’m reading between $500 and $4000 for smoking but can’t find the actual federal regulation.
ETA: Forgot the link about the fines Maskless flyers face $9,000 fines as U.S. FAA tackles unruly passengers | Reuters
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So would I. I’m all in on people objecting to this behavior, I was just surprised that the air circulation on a plane was so ineffective that the smoke from one offender was enough to cause several people to have trouble breathing.
As others have noted, it has implications for Covid safety on flights.
Yeah, that’s pretty much a given here. Though I think Colorado has overtaken us.
Hawaii is a different world man.
Whenever Kilauea is erupting – which it has done more or less continuously over the last 4 decades, plus extra big time in 2018 – we have the pleasure of inhaling essence of active volcano, even here on Oahu (depending on the wind direction).
Hell, you could just take an edible.
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I used to work in a company supplying aircraft parts around 10 years ago.
For the older aircraft that still had them, a broken ashtray was enough to ground the plane until fixed, even though smoking was banned 
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This. I smoked for thirty years before giving up, and I can detect cigarette smoke from some punk smoking somewhere in the metro station.
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In my experience, people complaining prefer to claim breathing problems rather than just say ‘I think you’re stinky’. Anti-maskers also often claim to have trouble breathing.
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Safety Matches
Carry On Bags: Yes
Checked Bags: No
One book of safety (non-strike anywhere) matches are permitted as carry-on items, but all matches are prohibited in checked baggage.
https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/whatcanibring/items/safety-matches
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