NO SMOKING,

But if you do …

ELL anyone under the age of 18 that once upon a time people were allowed to smoke on planes and they’re likely to laugh — or wait for the punchline.

With smoking banned these days even in many open-air public spaces, it’s hard to imagine a time when one could gaily spark up and blow smoke inside an air-tight, flying cabin.

Passengers could even buy cigarettes from the cabin crew then light them at 30 000 feet without a care in the world. Second-hand smoke was clearly not a worry.

The Telegraph points out, though, that all planes were smokefree by the end of the ’90s. And yet there remains on planes the world over a constant reminder of those hazy days: the ashtray. Why? According to the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) list of “minimum equipment” for aircraft, an ashtray in the plane toilet is a legal requirement.

Even though legal smoking on planes is long gone, bar a few belligerent celebrities, the FAA rules that lavatory doors must still be fitted with ashtrays because if someone were to sneak a fag, they’d still need to stub it out, and it’s best they have somewhere to do that rather than cause a fire by dropping it in the bin.

What’s more, if one of the aircraft’s ashtrays breaks, regulations say they must be fixed or replaced within 10 days (as long as 50% of the plane’s ashtrays are operational, otherwise they must be fixed in three days).

Indeed, in 2009, it was reported that a British Airways plane was