One company hopes to change that. Blu Cigs, maker of electronic cigarettes that offer the taste but not the tobacco found in a regular cigarette, is partnering with a charter jet company to provide free samples to passengers. It hopes some commercial airlines will consider following suit.
“Definitely it’s the first step,” Jason Healy, president of Blu Cigs, says of the partnership with Global Exec Aviation of Long Beach. “It’s largely to gather feedback … and just highlight the fact it’s an option.”
Smoking was prohibited on all commercial domestic flights and international flights to and from the U.S. in June 2000, according to the Transportation Department. It wasn’t banned on charter flights, but charter companies must provide a seat in a non-smoking part of the plane to anyone who asks.
The department has not taken a position on whether the smoking ban applies to e-cigarettes, spokesman Bill Mosley says.
Electronic cigarettes are battery-operated atomizers that warm up a flavored liquid that then produces vapor. The user gets bursts of nicotine and the feel of a regular cigarette, but there’s no smoke or odor.
The FAA and other industry officials say it’s up to individual carriers whether to allow the tobacco-free devices on board. For now, commercial airlines don’t appear to be budging.
“We have no plans to offer e-cigarettes, and we currently do not allow their use in-flight,” Southwest spokesman Brad Hawkins says.
Neither does American Airlines, spokeswoman Mary Frances Fagan says. “We have no plans to allow any cigarettes on our aircraft,” she says.
Jason Holi, an operations manager for Global Exec Aviation, says that the airlines might want to give electronic cigarettes a try.
A key factor in why he welcomed them onto the private jets managed by his company was the loss of a customer who would have paid $300,000 for a trip to South Africa but backed out when he learned he couldn’t smoke during the flight.
“We’re in a customer-service industry,” Holi says. “If I have a passenger who’s a white-knuckle flier but a heavy chain smoker, I want to make it as accommodating as possible for him.”
Still, he says he understands that airlines have a wider audience to please, and some fliers might object even if their fellow passengers are puffing vapor rather than smoke.
“When you’re in an enclosed environment with … so many different opinions,” he says, “that would create a problem.”
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