Why do planes have ashtrays if we’re not allowed to smoke?

WE KNOW smoking is banned on flights, but you can always find a nifty cigarette ashtray in the plane toilet. What gives?

news.com.auJune 8, 20178:12pm

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WE KNOW smoking is strictly banned on all flights, and yet we’ve all seen those cigarette ashtrays in the plane bathroom.

It’s especially puzzling on new planes, which were built long after the 1980s and 90s when a smoking ban on domestic and international flights swept globe.

Just last month, a British man was jailed for more than nine years for smoking in the toilet during a flight.

So why are airlines still offering us ashtrays while constantly telling us not to light up?

It turns out those baffling little ashtrays are actually required by law in a number of federal jurisdictions.

That’s because safety regulators know regardless of laws that prohibit smoking, there will always be someone who will sneak a ciggie in the cabin loo.

And when they do, they need a safe place to dispose of the cigarette butt.

Just imagine the risk of someone tossing the smouldering butt in the bathroom bin, which is filled with flammable paper towels and tissues.

Ashtrays or not, there is no excuse to smoke on a plane.

Ashtrays or not, there is no excuse to smoke on a plane.Source:ThinkStock

“Regardless of whether smoking is allowed in any other part of the aeroplane, lavatories must have self-contained, removable ashtrays located conspicuously on or near the entry side of each lavatory door,” reads the US Code of Federal Regulations.

There’s a similar ruling in the European Union.

So important is the presence of ashtrays on planes, a 2009 British Airways flight to Mexico City was actually delayed from taking-off until crew found a “viable” replacement for an ashtray that had been removed from a bathroom door on the plane.

Australia was the first country to totally outlaw smoking on domestic flights in 1987.

A 2013 report in The Australian revealed we could have been the first country to ban smoking on international flights, but then-Prime Minister Bob Hawke feared a smoke-free Qantas would be disadvantaged by foreign competitors that allowed its passengers to flare up whenever they wanted.

The Australian government eventually banned smoking on international flights within Australian airspace in 1990, and in 1996 banned smoking on all Australian international flights.

And aviation regulations are right — despite virtually every flight in the world now being smoke-free, people do flaunt the rules.

In May, British man John Cox was sentenced to nine years and six months in jail after he triggered the smoke alarm while disposing of a cigarette butt on a Monarch flight from Birmingham, UK, to Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, in 2015.

The captain issued a mayday call and the plane carrying more than 200 people was forced to make an emergency landing after cabin crew struggled to extinguished the blaze.

And last year, a woman lit-up a cigarette and began smoking on a Jetstar flight between Melbourne and Bali.

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