Smoking has been banned on nearly all airlines to nearly all countries around the world since the 1980s. And yet most aeroplanes still contain ashtrays. Why?
It surely doesn't make sense: if cigarettes are banned, there can't be any good reason for ashtrays to still be included, right?
Wrong. There is a very good reason for it. (And no, it's not because the planes were all made and designed before the smoking bans came into force - new planes also contain ashtrays.)
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The reason aeroplanes still have ashtrays after all these years is so there's a safe place to extinguish your cigarette and dispose of it once you're done. The American Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) lists ashtrays in bathrooms as a "minimum requirement", according to Time, because while smoking remains banned, if someone breaks the rules, the lack of an ashtray could put everyone at even more risk.
Bins in airplane bathrooms, for example, usually contain plenty of tissue, which is flammable, so a lit cigarette tossed into the trash could be extremely dangerous.
The regulation is still treated very seriously: in 2009, a British Airways flight bound for Mexico was grounded when staff discovered there were no ashtrays on board.
Don't take all this as an invitation to smoke, though: Time recalls the occasion in 1973 when 123 passengers died on a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris after the cabin filled with smoke, which was suspected to originate from a lit cigarette.
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