FAA Issues Airline Non-Smoking Rules

Airline flight delays will not result in relaxation of the new federal ban on smoking during flights scheduled to take less than two hours, according to government guidelines issued Monday.

Smokers will not be permitted to light up, for example, if a flight is scheduled for one hour and 50 minutes but, because of delays, actually lasts more than two hours. The anti-smoking regulation will take effect April 23.

Congress enacted the new smoking restriction covering the shorter flights last year, but details of how the prohibition is to be managed by the airlines were not known until the Federal Aviation Administration issued its rules Monday.

One major question the FAA answered was how the length of a flight is to be determined. The two-hour barrier will be defined by each flight’s “scheduled elapsed time,” as shown in the North American edition of the “Official Airline Guide.” That time begins when the plane is pushed away from the departure gate and ends when it docks at the arrival gate.

About 80% of all domestic flights will be affected by the new smoking restrictions. The prohibition will remain in effect for two years, and Congress will then decide whether to extend it.

Violators will be subject to a civil fine of $1,000 for each offense. People who tamper with smoke detectors in airliner lavatories could be fined as much as $2,000.

A spokesman for the Transportation Department--of which the FAA is a part--said Monday that if a passenger smokes in violation of the new rule, a flight attendant or a pilot will ask the smoker to stop. Should the passenger persist, “he presumably would be met by the authorities when he arrived at his destination.”

Managing the new two-hour rule will be difficult, observers said. Therefore, they predicted, U.S. airlines before long will ban smoking on all domestic flights. One airline, Northwest, has already announced that it will no longer allow smoking on any North American flights beginning April 23.

The Northwest plan has been praised by such groups as the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Assn., the American Lung Assn. and the U.S. surgeon general’s office.

The new regulation--affecting only cigarette smoking, because cigar and pipe smoking is already banned on U.S. airlines--comes at a time when an increasing number of smoking restrictions are being enacted around the nation.

There has been a significant decrease in the number of smokers in the United States in recent years. According to one study, the number of adult smokers in the country has declined 10 percentage points to 32% of the population since 1967.

Airlines can prohibit smoking on flights at any time without advance notice. This has been done on occasions when it was determined that there was too much smoke in the cabin for the aircraft’s ventilation system to handle or where there was a preponderance of nonsmokers on a flight.

Under the new government rules, each segment of a flight will be considered a separate flight. Thus, on a flight with legs of 90 minutes, 60 minutes and three hours, smoking would not be allowed on the first two segments but would be permitted on the third.

Non-smoking passengers with a great aversion to tobacco smoke could avoid smokers by forgoing nonstops and scheduling their trips on flights that make intermediate stops. However, such trips would take longer and might cost more.

The new government ban applies to both large airlines and commuter carriers but not to charter flights or air travel clubs. The rule also does not apply to international service or to non-U.S. carriers because they do not transport domestic passengers between U.S. cities.

Some airlines have already issued boarding passes for flights after April 23 in “smoking” sections, but these will not be honored, according to the rules released Monday. The current ban on all smoking while planes are on the ground will remain in force. Flight attendants must remind passengers of the smoking rules during preflight briefings.