Was traveling recently on an older 707 that had the 1960s style smoking/no smoking lights. After a chuckle at how old the jet carrying me was followed by the horror of imagining those around me lighting up in such a confined area, I said to my wife “how stupid were people in the Mad Men days to allow fire/cancer sticks while 30,000 feet in the air”.
She replied with a question, “has an airliner ever crashed due to a cigarette”?
Well…? 
How would a cigarette cause an airliner to crash? Give the engines lung cancer?
Even if you managed to start a fire, you’d be pretty unlikely to cause a crash. The fuel tanks are well isolated and you’d have to burn through a lot of stuff (with nobody noticing and grabbing a fire extinguisher) before you got to any critical hydraulics or electrical systems.
Stan Rogers was killed by an airplane fire that started in the lavatory, though I don’t think it was ever determined if a cigarette had started it. The plane didn’t crash though, the pilot managed to land, but the fire+smoke killed about half the people in the cabin by the time it was evacuated.
I’d imagine that the smoke accumulating would be more of an issue; after all, planes are completely sealed since they have to maintain pressure at high altitudes.
Googling, here’s a more clear-cut case of a cigarette fire downing a plane.
That’s not true. On large airliners at least, fresh air is sucked in through the engines and circulated through HEPA filters to mix with the cabin air.
And this crash famously led to all sorts of changes in airplane fire safety. Air Canada Flight 797 - Wikipedia
I’m impressed. I wouldn’t think it would be easy on something like a 707.
If you read this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Canada_Flight_797, you will see that the pilot is very blasé about the smoke in the lavatory, because waste-bin fires were so common due to cigarettes.
That can’t be good.
Possibly. Back in 1973 Varig flight 820 crashed at the end of an emergency landing after a fire started in the rear lavatory, possibly caused by a lit cigarette being dropped in a waste bin.
Cites (got a few as wikipedia seemed somewhat dubious):
http://www.airweb.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_Library/rgAD.nsf/0/6A1D491DCDC47B1B86256A3300697D39 (in the Summary paragraph)
Supposedly Time magazine wrote a story on it, but since they don’t allow non-subscribers to access the full text of articles, I can’t tell if it supports or weakens the wikipedia article.
I found another supposed crash in Gunagzhou, China where a cigarette again caused a fire in the cabin which then led to the oxygen tanks exploding. However, I could only find a couple cite for this, and they reference each other.
Right, in the case of Air Canada 797 the fire actually started in electrical wiring under the lavatory. When the pilots heard that there was smoke in the lavatory, they assumed that someone had been smoking and didn’t take the matter seriously until the airplane started loosing electrical systems. This is another way that smoking on airplanes is dangerous, it can mask smoke from actually dangerous fires on the plane.
Is it not the case that the no smoking signals existed (that is, when they were something turned on and off at various times) not specifically because of the risk of fire, but because of the increased risk of a fire starting due to a dropped cigarette during takeoff or landing (when things are generally jostling about a little)? - i.e. same reason for tray tables being stowed and loose items put away, etc.
Damn, but it sounds like most of the crew left the passengers to shift for themselves! :mad: 10 out of 17 crew survived, while only one passenger lived out of 117. :eek:
:dubious: I understand that the crew couldn’t allow any, or at least any significant number of, passengers to take refuge in the cockpit, which itself was taking on smoke, but I would bet that the cockpit crew wasn’t 10 people. :rolleyes:
The only thing more shocking than that was a crew of 17 for 117 passengers - a better than 1 to 7 ratio! What were they all doing? Giving foot massages?
707s carried 140 to 180 or so passengers. It sounds like the flight was only partly full, and there may have been - pardon the term - deadheading crew on the flight as well.
I recall that when Air Canada finally got around to banning smoking, first on all flights under 2 hours, then on all flights, it was widely predicted that they would lose much business. They were a bit ahead of the pack on this. I don’t think it affected business much one way or the other.
AFAIK it’s the opposite. Due to the smoking ban the air is now recycled much less than before (Various sites give various numbers but I’ve read 100% recycling with fresh air every two minutes before, to every 20 mins now), and filters are changed less often.
But, apart from some hazy recollection of a Bullshit episode mentioning this, I can’t seem to find any reliable cites, so I might be wrong 
No they are not. Bleed air from jet engines enters the cabin after being cooled down. There’s an exhaust valve that maintains cabin pressure at around 8,000 feet altitude pressure by allowing the cabin are to escape. There’s also some safety valves that will pop open the the automatic cabin pressure system fails closed.
Think of constantly pumping up a bicycle tire that has a small leak.
Older aircraft like the B-707 and DC-9 would exchange all the air in the cabin pretty often. Now newer aircraft recirculate about 60% of the cabin air. That saves fuel by needing less engine bleed air, but would be horrible if smoking was allowed.
I remember as a kid having to sit in the last row of the plane - when the last six rows or so were the smoking section. Man! That was bad!
“Any evidence that a cigarette ever brought down a commercial airliner?”
Pan Am had pilots who were known to land in mid flight for a pack of cigarettes so they could complete their flight.
In the 60s on cross Atlantic flights smokers brought these HUGE cigarettes!!!Many commercial airliners required that people with any cigarette over 6 foot long had to buy an additional seat to distribute their weight. TWA nearly had a crash in the mid 60s due to a Smoker’s Convention in Japan. The attendants didn’t pay attention to weight distribution and the plane flipped sideways in mid flight when the smokers all moved to one side in celebration.
Several small fires started as well leaving burns on various items.
Sorry couldn’t resist.