Pilot Turns Off Smoking Lamp; Tempers Ignite

A shouting and shoving match erupted among several passengers and airline flight attendants on a trip to Los Angeles when the pilot banned smoking, the passengers lit up anyway and had to be ordered to put out their cigarettes, officials said Thursday.

There were no injuries, but airline officials said four passengers were placed under citizen’s arrest by a flight attendant.

The pilot of Trans World Airlines Flight 853--a nonstop flight from Boston--radioed ahead, and Los Angeles International Airport police were waiting when the plane landed at 11:05 p.m. Wednesday, according to the police.

Although one flight attendant said she planned to file battery charges against a passenger who “physically confronted” her, the four passengers questioned by police were released without booking, LAX Police Sgt. Wanda Alford said.

At least one uninvolved passenger--Sandra Swinney of Altadena--said TWA “botched” the whole affair, exacerbating a situation she thought could have been resolved by trying to accommodate the smokers through last-minute rearrangement of the seating.

Smoking in Lavatories

The total ban prompted some passengers to sneak cigarettes in the lavatories, she said, a banned practice that led to a fire aboard an Air Canada jetliner in June, 1983, that claimed the lives of 23.

The case involving Wednesday’s TWA flight was handed over to the FBI, which said Thursday it was “looking into allegations of crime aboard an aircraft--interference with a crew member.”

Officials said the fracas had nothing to do with a new state law that goes into effect today banning smoking on all intrastate flights.

Bob Blattner, a spokesman for TWA in St. Louis, said the pilot announced before departure from the gate at Boston that because of an unusually high number of requests for nonsmoking seats, smoking would be banned in the coach and business sections on the six-hour flight. Smoking was permitted in the first-class section, where there were still enough nonsmoking seats.

Blattner explained that under Federal Aviation Administration rules, “whenever a nonsmoker requests a nonsmoking seat, he or she must be accommodated, and we must expand the nonsmoking section.”

The Lockheed L-1011 jumbo jet took off carrying 272 passengers--just three short of capacity--and a crew of 12.

‘Some Kind of a Protest’

The altercation began about an hour before landing when 11 passengers in the coach section “decided to light up their cigarettes in some kind of a protest,” Blattner said.

“A flight attendant, along with the flight service manager, approached them and requested that they put out their cigarettes,” Blattner said. “There were verbal exchanges, booing, and it got enough into physical pushing and shoving on a flight attendant so the captain was called.

“He came back, realized he was in a pretty volatile situation, so he called ahead and asked that the police be waiting when he landed.”

Swinney, who was returning to Southern California with her husband after a vacation on Cape Cod, gave a somewhat different account of what happened.

She said she did not hear any announcement of the smoking ban until the plane was away from the gate and out on the runway.

“My impression was that the people who wanted to smoke had no idea they couldn’t until it was too late to get off the plane,” she said.

‘Smokers Were Irate’

“The smokers were irate,” Swinney said. “Maybe 10 of them came up to talk to the stewardesses, and there were more of them in back.

“The whole flight was spent with the smokers sneaking cigarettes, and the stewardesses telling them not to smoke. Some were even smoking in the restrooms. I could hear the stewardess yell at one in there, and I smelled the smoke. That’s really dangerous. . . .

“TWA botched this,” said Swinney, who nonetheless added that she would prefer it if smoking were banned on all flights.

“They could have made arrangements to satisfy everyone if they rearranged the seats,” she said. “Maybe just the very back rows could have been for smoking, instead of making it all nonsmoking.”

Swinney said she did not see any physical altercation, but her view was blocked to the rear of the plane “and I heard yelling and clapping and a lot of things going on back there.”

The names of the passengers and crew members involved in the incident were not disclosed.

On Thursday, two major airlines--PSA and United--reversed their positions and announced they would comply with the new California law that goes into effect today banning smoking on all commercial trips that begin and end within the state although both airlines said they would wait until Tuesday to do so.

PSA and United, along with Alaskan Airlines, American Airlines and Amtrak, the nation’s passenger railway system, had said earlier they would not comply.

A federal law banning smoking on all flights of fewer than two hours goes into effect April 22. The four airlines--which account for most of the intrastate airline traffic in California--had said they would impose the federal regulation April 22 but contended that current federal law permitting smoking on most flights preempts any state law until then.

In changing its mind Thursday, United said it was doing so “because California law suggests that passengers could incur personal liability (for smoking) and we don’t want our passengers to incur liability.” PSA said it was doing so “because of the highly competitive California environment.”