How is this still a thing?
If you’ve been on a aeroplane recently, you might have noticed there are still ashtrays in the toilets.
If you took a minute to think about it, you may have wondered why this would still be a thing, given that smoking was outlawed on all planes back in the ’90s, and stopped being socially acceptable at all in the last few years, at least where there’s other people nearby.
So we decided to do some digging and see if we can get to the bottom of this weird little mystery.
Our first thought was, ‘so maybe it’s just that the ones we’ve seen are on older planes,’ but it turns out that there are ashtrays even in the brand new Boeing 787 Dreamliners that hit the airways in the last year or two!
So, if it’s not just a throwback, why do they still install ashtrays, even on brand new planes? Find out below.
We had a look at the Code of Federal Regulations for airworthiness (as you might), and found this interesting piece of text:
…lavatories must have self-contained, removable ashtrays located conspicuously on or near the entry side of each lavatory door, except that one ashtray may serve more than one lavatory door if the ashtray can be seen readily from the cabin side of each lavatory served.
OK, so they definitely meant to put them there, but why??
It’s as simple as this. People are the worst.
The fact of the matter is, no matter how much you say they can’t do it, some people just need to smoke, and will do it, no matter how gross it is, no matter how obviously they stink afterwards (think you got away with it, your next-seat neightbour disagrees!), and if those people exist, then there needs to be an ashtray.
Why?
Because if they are going to smoke, and there’s not somewhere to put their butts, they might put them ‘just anywhere’, and the plane might crash, like one did in the early ’70s.
So there you have it. Those tiny ashtrays make your flight just that little bit more ‘crash proof’.
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Written by Andy Zito
Image: Getty
