# Do you remember smoking sections on airplanes? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [May 13, 2021, 9:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-remember-smoking-sections-on-airplanes/941974 "2021-05-13T09:32:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2021, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-remember-smoking-sections-on-airplanes/941974/101 "2021-05-16T20:54:20Z")
I sure do, and back when I was a smoker. Still remember a minor incident flying from Brussels to Newark in 1986 where one passenger who had requested the non-smoking section complained to a stewardess that the guy sitting right behind her was smoking (not me). It turned out she was in the last row of non-smoking and he in the first row of smoking, so she was just out of luck. That was the old People’s Express. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2021, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-remember-smoking-sections-on-airplanes/941974/102 "2021-05-16T21:05:11Z")
**Do you remember smoking sections on airplanes?** I remember, age 12, flying on a charter flight from Saskatoon to London, and getting off the plane in London with a blazing headache from the guy across the aisle who chain smoked the entire flight. (Except when my tough-as-nails-Cockney-aunt shamed him into stopping for a bit: “Don’t you see my nephew has a headache from your smoking!!!”) ---
**Author:** ![carrps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carrps/32/2957_2.png) [@carrps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrps)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2021, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-remember-smoking-sections-on-airplanes/941974/103 "2021-05-16T22:47:27Z")
Kelbo’s! I remember it kept burning down. Did they do flaming cocktails or something? My parents would never take me even though I begged like crazy. It changed into a strip club many, many years ago. I’m not sure if the building is still there or not. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2021, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-remember-smoking-sections-on-airplanes/941974/104 "2021-05-16T23:36:02Z")
If you’re from Los Angeles and you (or your parents) were/are into tiki even a smidgen, do read that whole thread. It’s a treat. ---
**Author:** ![WildaBeast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wildabeast/32/6_2.png) [@WildaBeast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WildaBeast)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2021, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-remember-smoking-sections-on-airplanes/941974/105 "2021-05-17T19:41:20Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > That was the old People’s Express. I initially parsed that as the “Old People’s Express”, like a plane entirely filled with senior citizens. ---
**Author:** ![carrps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carrps/32/2957_2.png) [@carrps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrps)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2021, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-remember-smoking-sections-on-airplanes/941974/106 "2021-05-17T20:28:41Z")
I went to the site (didn’t have time to investigate it at the time), but it was in Hollywood. I never knew there were two Kelbo’s! I googled to find “my” Kelbo’s was the one on Pico (WLA), but there were _four_ of them. My folks were not into tiki at all. I wanted to be, but had to settle for Bahooka’s in the SGV. It’s gone now, too, of course. I’d think retro tiki could be an idea whose time has come (again). One interesting thing in another Kelbo’s article was that the decor mostly came from the old “The Akron” stores. Remember those??? ---
**Author:** ![eenerms](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/cdc98d/32.png) [@eenerms](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eenerms)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2021, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-remember-smoking-sections-on-airplanes/941974/107 "2021-05-18T20:57:09Z")
I remember my first Trans Atlantic flight 1962, plush seats smoking everywhere. Then flying to and from Saudi Arabia in the 90s, there were the no smoking sections…I always sat in the row just ahead…or so it seemed. ---
**Author:** ![WildaBeast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wildabeast/32/6_2.png) [@WildaBeast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WildaBeast)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2021, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-remember-smoking-sections-on-airplanes/941974/108 "2021-05-19T01:17:39Z")
Something just made me think of the old Simon and Garfunkel song “America”, and it hit me that in the lines: > “Toss me a cigarette, I think there’s one in my raincoat” > “We smoked the last one an hour ago” > So I looked at the scenery, she read her magazine …They’re referencing smoking _on a Greyhound bus_. Or at least they would have been had they not run out of cigarettes (But that one they smoked an hour ago was probably on the bus, too). My how times have changed. Contrast that with when I took an Amtrak train a couple of years ago. The guy sitting across the aisle from me was apparently so desperate for a cigarette at every stop he would hop off the train, light up his cigarette, take a couple of puffs while passengers were boarding, extinguish the cigarette, and hop back on the train. ---
**Author:** ![outlierrn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/outlierrn/32/3005_2.png) [@outlierrn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/outlierrn)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2021, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-remember-smoking-sections-on-airplanes/941974/109 "2021-05-19T02:43:45Z")
Heck, I remember smoking sections at high school. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2021, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-remember-smoking-sections-on-airplanes/941974/110 "2021-05-19T04:23:21Z")
[![](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Q9zWw0Ru28w/hqdefault.jpg "Brownsville Station-Smokin in the Boys room") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9zWw0Ru28w) ---
**Author:** ![Projammer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/projammer/32/559_2.png) [@Projammer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Projammer)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2021, 10:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-remember-smoking-sections-on-airplanes/941974/111 "2021-05-19T10:19:26Z")
I was on a plane earlier this year that still had the openings for ash receptacles in the arm rests, though they were now capped with stainless steel plates. The ash tray in the restroom was still fully functional. But clean. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2021, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-remember-smoking-sections-on-airplanes/941974/112 "2021-05-19T15:01:58Z")
> [@Projammer](#): > > The ash tray in the restroom was still fully functional. But clean. CLean is good. Me from further upthread: > [@LSLGuy](#): > > > [@Die\_Capacitrix](#): > > > > Last year I needed to use the bathroom at the car dealer, which was probably built in the 1960s. The bathroom stalls had ashtrays. > > Little known fact. The lavatories on airliners still have a little fold-out ashtray set into the inside of the door. It’s the same ashtray as was there in the 1960s and is still required to be there by FAA regulation. > > The thinking being that that’s the least bad place for an illicit smoker to dispose of an illicit butt. Far better there than in the trash can full of used paper towels, etc. Or down the toilet where the solid cig filter can eventually hang up somewhere downstream. And we don’t want them disassembling the pop-up sink stopper / strainer to drop their butt down there either; that plumbing is even more cloggable. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-remember-smoking-sections-on-airplanes/941974.md?page=5)