United Just Grounded Fleet of Planes Because Its No Smoking Signs Don't Turn Off

https://viewfromthewing.com/united-airlines-just-grounded-a-fleet-of-planes-because-its-no-smoking-signs-dont-turn-off/

by bookofjoe • 2 years ago

31 53 2 years ago

viewfromthewing.com

cranberryturkey• 2 years ago

Did the airline industry adopt agile or something?

ric2b• 2 years ago

No, but Boeing seems to have adopted fragile.

geoffpado• 2 years ago

The article is about an Airbus plane.

quantified2• 2 years ago

... and the last ashtrays disappeared a few years back.

I wonder if our space tourism rockets will have no smoking signs in the cabins.

d_silin• 2 years ago

I flew transatlantic in 2024 on a brand new A350 and it still had an ashtray in the bathroom door. I think it is going to be a while until they remove those.

HWR_142• 2 years ago

Isn't that because some customers want the ashtrays, and it's cheaper to just add them to everything.

siva7• 2 years ago

They never will. It's for safety reasons on those who won't comply so they don't burn down the plane accidentally.

analog31• 2 years ago

Just the mass of gum in those ashtrays probably cost several gallons of fuel per flight.

function_seven• 2 years ago

I doubt the mass of gum in an airplane ashtray would add even a single extra gallon to the fuel burn.

The least efficient plane[0] burns 1 gallon per passenger every 64 miles. A 3,000 mile flight will burn 47 gallons of fuel per passenger.

A stick of gum can be up to 7 grams[1]. Let's assume it's even heavier once chewed, and is a nice, round 10 grams.

If we assume the mean passenger weighs only 50kg (or, 5,000 pieces of gum), then each piece of gum is responsible for 9.4 milligallons of fuel for that trip. Or 1.2 fl-oz.

Now if we consider that there is gum all over the plane, maybe a soda-can's worth of jet fuel is burned up ferrying it all around. But that's with optimistic passenger weights, pessimistic gum masses, a gas-guzzler of a jet, and probably a calculation error I've made converting between all the different units above.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_aircraft#Airli...:

On the other side, the least efficient was British Airways at 27 pax-km/L (3.7 L/100 km [64 mpg‑US] per passenger), using fuel-inefficient Boeing 747-400s with a low density of 0.75 seat/m2 due to a high 25% premium seating, in spite of a high 82% load factor.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chewing_gum#Product_varieties

Chewing gum can come in a variety of formats ranging from 1.4 to 6.9 grams per piece, and products can be differentiated by the consumers' intent to form bubbles or the sugar/sugarless dichotomy.

jojobas• 2 years ago

Ashtrays are still required in toilets and perhaps somewhere else, since it's very preferable that idiot smokers don't dump their butts into paper-filled rubbish bins before getting arrested.

LeoPanthera2• 2 years ago

... and the last ashtrays disappeared a few years back.

No they didn't. Aircraft are still legally required to have ashtrays, at the very least, in the bathrooms.

fbdab103• 2 years ago

I find this very amusing.

Apparently airlines started banning smoking in the 1980s, but an industry ban was enacted in 2000. Maybe this will be the decade they decide to pull the ashtray requirement.

quantified2• 2 years ago

! I must locate it when I fly next.

mondobe• 2 years ago

"No vaping", more likely.

jmward01• 2 years ago

This is why it takes over a decade to build and certify a new aircraft

pinkgolem4• 2 years ago

To many ancient rules that are no longer relevant? At least in this example...

LeoPanthera2• 2 years ago

Holy misleading headline, Batman.

It's not United's entire fleet, as the headline implies. It's just their (relatively small) collection of Airbus A321neo planes.

The signs are not faulty. They're deliberately hardwired on, as they are in United's Boeing planes.

"The airline’s Boeing 737, 757, 767, and 777 aircraft already have no smoking signs “hardwired to stay illuminated at all times” according to the filing. United just forgot to ask for the same regulatory waiver for the A321neo as for these aircraft. This is a new plane type for the airline. They have 5 currently in service."

NoPicklez• 2 years ago

It's not misleading, a fleet can just mean a particular group of. Nowhere did they say entire fleet, just "fleet of planes".

GavinMcG• 2 years ago

Where no indefinite article is used, one tends to read the noun as definite. “Grounded a Fleet” would be more clear.

noqc• 2 years ago

Perhaps this is a no green M&Ms situation.

askvictor2• 2 years ago

Brown. Details matter.

TillE• 2 years ago

It's not a malfunction.

dehrmann• 2 years ago

This is more of how could a regulator that hasn't cleaned up regulations that have been out of date for two decades be expected to keep a close eye on Boeing.

MichaelZuo• 2 years ago

This proves the plane manufacturer didn't read or understand the full 100% of the regulations, what other regulations did they not read or understand?

It seems like a valuable test to check if there are more difficult to errors lurking elsewhere.

Dylan16807• 2 years ago

If the plane had been miswired, I could see it.

Forgetting to ask for a waiver, nah I don't see it.

pinkgolem4• 2 years ago

For everyone being to lazy to read the article: 1model affected, it is build to spec of the airline, functions like most other models

airline just missed requesting an exception from an ancient, no longer relevant rule the FAA should change(smoking signs need to be able to be turned of by the crew)

Reason077• 2 years ago

Many smokers live in hope that one day these nanny-state smoking restrictions will finally be repealed, and we’ll be able to once again light up a nice relaxing cigarette onboard airplanes.

So it’s important that flight crew can still operate the signs, for when that day comes.

Smoking on the airplane! It was a golden age of travel.

pinkgolem4• 2 years ago

How I do not miss those days with smoke being everywhere

pests2• 2 years ago

I used to go to a bar dart league in my area, Metro Detroit, that still let people smoke even just a year or two ago last time I was there.

Not sure if this is 100% true or they were just bullshitting, but they explained Michigan's smoking laws were intended to protect employees who were required to be around it all the time. They claimed that if you had a privately owned establishment with no employees you could allow it.

Didn't really care to fact check them at the time but always pondered on this.

pbj1968• 2 years ago

I still remember smoking on airplanes. Towards the end, they used to sequester them and close a curtain as though that protected us. Weird times of the tyranny of the minority. It did make for easy times to get a table during the “first available” twilight period of going to restaurants. One of my elders remarked, “nobody is actually smoking in this section.” Shh!

Habitual smokers were never over 50% in America - look it up.

And 2 out of 3 of them died from causes unrelated to smoking.

So it goes.

bruce511• 2 years ago

> And 2 out of 3 of them died from causes unrelated to smoking.

I mean, OK, 2 thirds didn't die from smoking. But 1 third DID. So basically you're saying that since smoking only killed one-in-three, it somehow wasn't the big deal people made it out to be?

And that's -before- we discuss the non-fatal health issues of the other 2 thirds? Or the health issues of non-smokers exposed to second hand smoke.

I remember the 80's. Smoke everywhere, all the time. On planes, trains, busses - in restaurants, pubs, offices. I do not miss that.

1 in 3 died. Troops landing on D-Day had better odds of survival.

readthenotes12• 2 years ago

But let's bring this back to me: The stench was nearly unbearable at times.

AmericanChopper• 2 years ago

Habitual smokers were never over 50% in America - look it up.

Stats on this really only go back to 1965, when pretty close to half of US adults smoked. But that’s 15 years after the link between cancer and smoking was established, it’s after doctors had gone from endorsing smoking to testifying against it, and after the ban on advertising smokings “health benefits”.

I’d be very surprised if less than half of US adults smoked in the early 50s and prior. The only thing I imagine could confound that would be the fact that women were quite a bit less likely to smoke than men were, but even in the earliest statistics available about 1/3 of them did.

olliej• 2 years ago

2 out of 3 died from causes unrelated to smoking, means that 1 out of 3 died from something that was not able to kill others, except via second hand smoke, which is ignored. There are very few things where we accept 1:2 fatality rates at all.

The bigger issue of course is presenting smoking as being a personal choice. That's only the case if smoking in no way impacts anyone else, which is not the case. Workers in industries where smoking was permitted show many of the symptoms regular smokers get, regardless of their personal smoking habits (70% according to https://www.fightcancer.org/policy-resources/effects-secondh...). e.g. a personal acceptance of choosing to smoke and saying "I accept the risk of smoking related illness" is similar to saying "I accept the risk of driving while drunk" in that it acknowledges the risk of harm to the person making the choice, but disregards the impact of that choice on everyone else.

danShumway• 2 years ago

Only on HN can I read a comment lamenting that we stopped allowing smoking in public places and being like, "it wasn't even that dangerous, it only killed 33% of the people who did it." :)

philip12092• 2 years ago

I know that certain lights within planes are used by captains to signal information to crews. For instance, I believe it's common to use "Fasten seatbelt light on/off twice" to signal reaching 10,000 feet in altitude.

Does anybody know if the no-smoking sign is used for any sort of signaling? (I doubt it because it doesn't make a noise, like the seatbelt signal. But, it might!)

medler• 2 years ago

Apparently not, since many aircraft have them hardwired to always be on

philip12092• 2 years ago

The procedures are specific to the company and their equipment, so it's possible - especially in American fleets.

p1mrx• 2 years ago

It is somewhat confusing to tweet about UA with Ukraine flags in your name.

fotbr• 2 years ago

They're looking at it wrong. The signs are operable by the flight crew.

Given: Aircraft power is on, signs are on. Aircraft power is off, signs are off. Aircraft power is operable by the flight crew.

Therefore: Signs are operable by the flight crew.

In addition to the aircraft main power system(s), there's almost certainly a circuit-breaker that would turn the signs off. It might turn other things off as well, and circuit-breakers are not generally designed to be used regularly as switches, but there's a circuit breaker in reach of the crew that would turn those signs off.

United Just Grounded Fleet of Planes Because Its No Smoking Signs Don't Turn Off

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