I flew internationally extensively in '00/'01 and that must have been just after it was banned. I remember an Olympic flight from London to Athens where the now-standard "you can't smoke" announcements were made, and the signs were all turned on, and the second the wheels left the tarmac fully half of the plane lit up.

In the same period I flew Air France, to Senegal if memory serves. Again, no smoking and all that, but the stewardesses all bundled up in their galley, curtains closed, and were puffing away.

Bizarre to think about now.

I flew from JFK to Heathrow in 1986 (don't recall the airline but assume it was either a major US carrier or British Airways) - I vividly remember the cabin being full of cigarette smoke. I suppose there must have been a nominal "section" but can't remember.

According to Wikipedia:

"After years of debate over health concerns, Congressional action in 1987 led to a ban on inflight smoking.

The U.S. ban on inflight smoking began with domestic flights of two hours or less in April 1988, extended to domestic flights of six hours or less in February 1990, and to all domestic and international flights in 2000."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflight_smoking

Having flown a lot when smoking was allowed, and you couldn't get away from it, it's nice to not have it anymore.

As an asthmatic, I find the dry air on planes to be bad enough. If smoking were still allowed, I probably wouldn't be able to fly.

I was just thinking that, holy cow. It's bad enough when a smoker sits down next to you on the bus. Imagine the guy next to you lighting up on a four hour flight. Holy shit.

Worse still, at the time of this episode (1963), there wasn't even a notion of a "Smoking Section". Smokers lit up anywhere on planes, anywhere in restaurants, anywhere in the office, on line at the bank, in any sort of waiting room, really anywhere in general. The very concept of a "Smoking Section" wasn't a thing until the 70's, and it was years before they were ubiquitous in the US.

Even as a former smoker, I never really thought too much about smoking sections until my wife was pregnant. Suddenly someone smoking in the wrong area was a threat to my unborn child and really rubbed me the wrong way. I'm all for personal freedom, but exercising this one around others is stomping on their freedom to breathe freely. I'm glad as a society we've moved on from this for the most part.

Even as late as 1995, I remember flying from South Africa to the UK (in the non-smoking section) while the guy behind me (in the smoking section) was smoking extremely smelly eastern European cigarettes. Quite an adventure when you're prone to airsickness.

When I was a boy in the 80s it was still common. My parents didn't smoke, so I loved going on planes, or into restaurants & hospitals (!) to smell smoke. I'm sad that we've lost that culture.

I hope this is some kind of very, very dry irony :)

I flew from Tel Aviv to New York in 1997 and the plane still had a smoking section.

I recall a trip to Japan in the early or mid 90s where I was dumped in the smoking section by mistake. Very long flight.

The same thing happened to me on the Shinkansen. My eyes were stinging by the end of it. Thankfully they have replaced smoking cars with smoking rooms since then. The JP govt appears to be cracking down on smoking + "encouraging" free Wi-Fi everywhere in time for 2020.