Smoking Regulations on International Flights

Intrastate flights

• Muse Air, also known as TransStar, opened business as the first to offer smoke free flights. Southwest Airlines purchased Muse Air a year later and revoked the smoking ban. California Governor George Deukmejian singed S.B. 1067 making all in-state and public transportation smoke free. As more intrastate flights progressed to non-smoking, interstate flights followed suit.
  
  

Interstate flights

• President Ronald Regan signed the Federal Aviation Act making all domestic flights of two hours or less smoke free effective April 23, 1988. This law was set to end in 1990, however the House of Representatives extended the bill past two years. In November 1989, President Bush signed a law making domestic flights of six hours or less smoke-free. When Senate Bill S. 519 went into effect in February 1990, all but 28 of 16,000 flights became smoke-free.
  
  

Foreign Flights

• Air Canada and Canadian Airlines International made all of their intercontinental flights smoke-free in 1988. British Airways made all domestic flights smoke-free in 1989. Delta Airways went smoke-free worldwide in 1995. By 1997, Northwest and Continental remained the only two major U.S. airlines allowing smoking on international flights. 1998 marked 100 percent smoke-free domestic and international flights for British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, Lufthansa, Aer Lingus, Finnair, Icelandair and Scandinavian Airlines. The Federal Aviation Administration Bill, passed in 1999, prohibited smoking on all flights to and from the U.S.
  
  

Surveys

• Following California's smoke-free law going into effect, a poll conducted found 84 percent of California's airline passengers approved, further stating 54 percent would fly on a different airline if completely smoke-free. The American Association for Respiratory Care released national study information showing 92.8 percent of nonsmokers and 58.1 percent of smokers approved of the Federal Aviation Act restricting flights two hours or less to nonsmoking.
  
  

Time line

• In the course of 29 years, airlines went from allowing smoking to prohibiting smoking on all flights. United Airlines was the first to offer a separate smoking section in 1971. As studies were conducted showing the harmful effects of secondhand smoke, airlines in conjunction with local and federal governments worked together to ban smoking. The Wendell H. Ford Aviation Investment and Reform Act made all flights between foreign and U.S. destinations smoke-free June 4, 2000.