TICAP, The Hague, March 15th 2010

Sunday, December 21, 2008

In-flight smoking!

By Gasdoc

No! Not really! I just thought I'd jot a little down on my experience of electronic smoking on my flight home from Florida 10 days ago.

It was with my inner child making mischief that I walked back to the cabin crew's rear hiding place on flight BA 2036. I enquired as to whether she had heard of the electric cigarette, demonstrating the device lying in it's case. I was met with a vacant stare, which did not last long, as customer service training took over automatically. The young lady, although both perplexed and possibly concerned as to my state of substance withdrawal, would seek further guidance from a senior. The younger looking senior arrived and clarified the issue: Was I asking to use the device in the cabin? I replied in the affirmative, but for some reason felt it necessary to assure her that I was not psychologically dependant on doing this and would not start leading a protest or behave awkwardly should it be refused. She decided she would have to ask the captain, as, I suspect, it was not in the training manual. She returned rapidly and the captain, who professed to have heard of the concept, had no objections. However, he had advised her to inform passengers close by that I would be doing something that may look wrong, but was not!

Well, all that over with, I remained unrestrained and we had not been forced back to Orlando to have me removed, and after a respectable wait, I began to experiment with my new gadget. Feeling slightly guilty about the wisp of water vapour and looking like a naughty boy I sucked and I played.

Essentially it was mildly gratifying to breath in deeply through a plastic/metal cigarette and the steam added to the illusion. You have to suck harder than with a real fag and no mistake, it's not like smoking. However, passing the thing through my fingers and putting it to my lips, was, without doubt an assitance in resembling my normal behaviour. So that and the max strength nicotine patch worked a treat. A definite improvement. The next stage is to go without the patch.