After manspreading – and eating a stinky tuna sandwich onboard – a passenger took out his vape. His seat opponent decided to report him to a flight attendant onboard as revenge for being rude throughout the flight. The man “started going off” which brought the flight attendant back into the conflict.
When she asked him to stop he pretended like he didn’t know it was illegal, but when he was going off on me for telling on him he admitted to knowing it was illegal lmao. After she asked him to stop he just went to vape in the bathroom instead. He also admitted to the flight attendant that he was in fact hitting his vape.
Guy vaping on the plane next to me
byu/Jeix9 inmildlyinfuriating
Amazingly, the flight didn’t divert and crew didn’t have law enforcement meet the plane. Instead, the vaper just got a stern warning and no penalty. Mostly, he was a jerk. And other than escalating the conflict, wasn’t actually creating a risk to the aircraft. Vaping is against the rules but not a safety risk.
From the photo, this appears to me to be a WestJet flight. The napkin shows a McCafé logo and WestJet serves McCafé coffee. The “Literature Only / Papier seulement” tells me this is a Canadian carrier, and the teal accents flag WestJet as well.
It’s notable, though, that the U.S. rule against vaping onboard really is just the rule against smoking even though the two are very different.
- The FAA has interpreted the prohibition on cigarette smoking to include vaping products. According to the rulemaking,
The NPRM stated our position that the reasons supporting the statutory and regulatory ban on smoking also apply to a ban on e-cigarettes
- That’s the case even though the FAA rule explicitly allows a passenger to emit vapor if it is from a “medically beneficial substance.” So it’s not about banning vapor.
- The regulation simply extends the ban on cigarettes to include e-cigarettes, which weren’t contemplated when the law against on board smoking was passed.
Note also that the concern wasn’t batteries, as some people mistakenly believe. Laptops, cell phones, tablets, and noise cancelling headphones are permitted. And the ban on vaping predates concerns over external batteries. Plus, airlines do have procedures – and burn bags – for dealing with outlier issues inflight.
There’s a stigma against vaping, and other passengers might think vapers are smoking a cigarette even though they aren’t.
The first airline to create a nonsmoking section was United back in 1971. No U.S. airline fully banned smoking worldwide until Delta in 1994. U.S. airlines were still allowed to offer on board smoking up until 2000.
Yet planes still have ashtrays! You’ll usually find them in or near the lavatory, because customers may smoke even though it’s illegal to do so – and they need a place to put out their cigarettes. Without ashtrays they’d be most likely to put out their cigarettes in the lavatory trash.. and light the paper tossed away inside on fire.
One passenger who lit her cigarette inflight says police beat her after flight attendants spiked her drink. And in 2020 a passenger lit up a cigarette after refusing to wear a mask on board.
Before the pandemic another passenger downed 4 bottles of beer, vaped an e-cigarette, and punched a flight attendant all before his honeymoon. Another lit a cigarette, drank his own booze, and bit a flight attendant’s ear. While a man who burned himself with his own e-cigarette on board had the temerity to sue the airline.
Surprised Gary’s avoided shutdown talk. Remember, folks, if you want the shutdown to end, just convince the ATC in NYC region to ‘call out sick,’ and, within days, that’ll be that (like in 2019). And, just to get ahead of this, which ‘team’ leads all branches of the federal government? Anyway, healthcare does seem like a good ‘hill to die on.’ Ironic how the ‘red’ states don’t want FEMA during hurricane season; luckily, it’s been calm so far… phew!
Wrong again! I wish you would hire a copy editor/fact checker everything you publish has some aspect of it false.
Northwest Orient banned smoking system-wide in 1988.
All Delta did of infamous note was to get Pan Am’s transatlantic routes with the promise of supporting it when it restructured as a smaller company working out of Miami with South America routes. Just as soon as they got their route authorities transferred well they welched on the deal and I was one of the thousands who came to work on December 4th, 1991 to learn that the greatest airline that has ever existed had stopped flying.
Anyway, you’ll never be anyone’s authority unless you start to get it right!
I like the perp already for eating a tuna sandwich. I have made them myself for eating while flying. Not stinky, not smelly.
@jns — Cold, or as a tuna melt? Maybe the heated version is what smells. Or is it the bad breath afterwards that offends. I’ve always been surprised by lounges that serve beans… like, should passengers really be ‘loading up’ on those. Might as well get down a few cheesy bean burritos with fire sauce…
Cold, but it warmed to room temperature after a 3 or 4 hours of getting to and taking the first flight. Tasty and good food. If I remember rightly I ate them at JFK before the flight to LAX, but I might have saved one for the flight. The salad dressing probably kept the odor down. No one seem bothered or even knew about my sandwiches. Honestly the stink and smelly descriptions makes me think of Don Quixote tilting at windmills.
Um, what about disobeying Crewmember instructions? Should have had Law Enforcement meet the plane to impress upon him the proper behavior.
@jns — At least with on-board flatulence, rarely can anyone hear it. The engines drown out the noise. Not like tooting on a crowded elevator. You can go ‘loud and furious’ while airborne. Silent but deadly still potent everywhere.
Should have had the plane met by Law Enforcement. What happened to obeying Crewmember instructions. Most FA would have found him to be a threat since he refused to follow instructions.
@1990 — Reminds me of Peter Griffin’s special “skill” timing his farts to a Thunderstorm haha
He’s eating tuna, he’s vaping, he man spread (whatever that means)…WAAAAAHHHHHHH!!! I’m telling mommy!! What a bunch of whimps the American people have become. I’m sure the “offended” person was dressed in polyester shorts with flip flops and a dirty wrinkled t-shirt. Grow up America, no wonder the whole world hates us, (except israel).
Moving what’s left of business travel to online conferencing in the process. And keeping it there afterward.
@Denver Refugee — Woah, let’s not upset corporate landlords… those meetings cannot be emails or merely sent from home… no, never. We must commute to office buildings! RTO!
@L737 — “The storm’s movin’ away…”
I have read this blog for most of the past couple of decades, maybe posting a comment once or twice in that period. I am compelled to comment on something I am noticing with this and other travel related blogs over the past couple of years. Is there some sort of surreptitious movement afoot to dissuade people from traveling as much as in the past? It seems that almost daily we are treated to articles about the poor behavior of the traveling public, when this seemed to be more of an outlier years ago. Additionally, we are constantly bombarded with stories about corporate indifference in the travel space, a seeming race to the bottom. It has gotten to the point that many have expressed a desire not to travel via common carriers, and drive whatever distance, utilizing their own personal vehicles, since certain rental car companies have also joined in the race to the bottom. Am I crazy, or is something going on here, either planned, or part of an overall societal decline? I’d love to hear the thoughts of others, particularly more traveled individuals.
Why the love for vaping? It’s gross and it is effectively the same discomfort for other passengers as if one was smoking.
Weird take.
@jsjax37 — Welcome Jacksonvillian! I’m assuming the ‘jax’ refers to that airport in NE FL. If not, nevermind.
Travel blogs, like VFTW, get ad a little advertising revenue from views and clicks as well as commissions if you use their sign-up links, so, posting salacious commentary and boosting engagement does ‘help’ them… maybe that, as well as the social media era generally accounts for the frenzy you are noticing. I will say, I still prefer Gary’s site over all the others, because he is one of the more personable, level-headed, fair ones out there, and unlike the corporate shills over at TPG, Gary still allow comments by us, even if half the time it’s banter and inside jokes.
No, there’s no conspiracy to stop folks from traveling; other than the brief shutdown in some places during the early stages of the pandemic, travel by all means has increased steadily each year, and continues to do so, with new records at airports, particular cities and sites, etc.
No, it’s the climate scientists have not convinced the masses to stay home or just ride bikes everywhere, even if the warming planet will kill off many ecosystems and affect coastal cities soon enough.
Ugh, typos, syntax, whatever. At least I didn’t post the same thing twice…
Before the pandemic another passenger downed 4 bottles of beer, vaped an e-cigarette, and punched a flight attendant all *before his honeymoon*.
WTF? *before his honeymoon*! I’m just gobsmacked.
I hope his new wife got away from him before anything happened to her.
@jsjax37 – These things have always happened (though increased during the pandemic). What you’re seeing is travel blogs running low on other stories for the day, so they look for content to fill the gaps. Why do they need more content? It maintains engagement, which is fundamentally what drives ad sales. IDK your history, but to me, VFTW is slowly evolving into the local nightly news of the 90’s, with 1-2 sunny stories, maybe one interesting one, and then a lot of “scary” stories that keep viewers engaged.
@Steve – I mean, it’s not the same lung irritation as actual smoke, but it’s roughly as addictive even second-hand. I’m not a fan, either.
Never exaggerate your sensibilities or sensitivities to stroke your ego. It makes you look weak. We all know that vapor and smoke are completely different. When other people engage in indulgences you dislike, but it has no effect on you whatsoever, then resilience and tolerance are the much better alternative!
Delta was NOT the first to ban smoking, it was Northwest in1994. Get the facts right.
@jamesb2147 — ‘Scary’ stories, you say? I’d’ve gone with ‘spooky,’ you know, since it’s nearly Halloween…
@EgE — Ahh, yes… Northwest ORIENT. Totally unrelated, but… which airline did Northwest merge into?
Travel-wise, it turned that you can, in fact, “do (nearly) everything over the Internet,” and the savings of money, time and stress far outweighed any advantages to in-person meetings. (Cynics such as myself often argued the main reason people still meet in-person is for avoiding audit trails.)
So, with a lot of professionals gone, the skies (and hotels) have filled up with amateurs. With predictable results.
@Denver Refugee — Speak for yourself, sometimes watching ‘amateurs’ is more interesting than ‘professionals.’ Wait, what’r we talking about again?
So where is his face for the whole world to see??
The same thing happened a while back with an Asian male and he was captured for the world to see and arrested. This is white privilege at its best.