March 23, 2008

Airbus A380: But why has it got ashtrays?

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The Telegraph finds out why are there still ashtrays in the Airbus A380 which is being sold as the aircraft of the future.

This brand-new cutting-edge plane has been constructed with built-in ashtrays – and, for that matter, wholly redundant, always-illuminated no-smoking signs. When I asked a spokesman for Singapore Airlines, he confessed that even the company's CEO had been baffled as to what they were doing there.

Link

Submitted by lancerlord on March 22//11:54am and published by jseng, tinkertailor :: 2695 reads | trackback
Comments 4

Jeez. The answer to that inane question is in the next para of the article! (i.e. the rule was implemented by the FAA) Oddly enough, I've come to expect such dumb anachronistic rules from them.

Posted by Leong 15* on 23 March, 2008 - 12:10pm

The so-called FAA regulation seems to be a myth.
Federal Aviation Regulations Part 23, Airworthiness Standards : Normal, Utility, Acrobatic and Comuter Category Airplanes state "If smoking is to be prohibited, there must be a placard so stating, and if smoking is to be allowed—
(1) There must be an adequate number of selfcontained, removable ashtrays; [...]"

Posted by pratalife on 26 March, 2008 - 9:08am

Let's get into the central issues here: smoking is harmful, ashtrays are not harmful. The central issue is that the ashtray is not a central issue.

Posted by aaronkwok* on 26 March, 2008 - 10:09am

Yeh, I thought about it for 3 days and 3 nights, I had a splitting headache over it, I look through all the assumptions and nuances, and finally this was the conclusion I painstakingly arrived at.

No wonder all those other guys couldn't see it.

Posted by aaronkwok* on 2 April, 2008 - 8:57am