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Why airplane bathrooms have ashtrays

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Re: Why airplane bathrooms have ashtrays

#51

Post by there »

phamilton wrote: post #45

This reminds me of a presentation by Twitter at a conference where they discussed MTBR (Mean Time Before Recovery) instead of MTBF (Mean Time Before Failure). Instead of trying to prevent all possible failures, they focused on acceptable failure and speedy recovery. If a server takes twice as long to response to a request, mark it offline and let the automated recovery process diagnose the problem and if it's just an…

Audi's strategy in the early 2000s for winning Le Mans 12- and 24-hour endurance races against Bentley was to engineer their cars around failure. The Bentley cars were faster, but Audi engineered theirs to be easier to fix. Over such long races, there were bound to be crashes or failures of various parts and the faster Audi could fix their cars, the quicker they could get back out on the track to outlast the faster cars.

A great example of this was that Bentley used the lightest bolt they could everywhere on the car to minimize weight, but Audi used the same size bolt everywhere to minimize the number of tool changes needed to replace the parts.

Re: Why airplane bathrooms have ashtrays

#52

Post by there »

stevenwei wrote: post #50

Then the bleeding-heart liberals attacked in 1988, complaining about their “filthy air” and their “lung cancer”. This was, of course, the thin end of the wedge. In 2000, the FAA banned smoking on commercial planes altogether. Talk about a bunch of buzz-kills. Really? Does anyone actually think this was a bad idea? Forget the "filthy air" or "lung cancer", exposure to smoke can seriously aggravate asthmatics and other…

I took it to be sarcasm. Anyone that puts "lung cancer" in scarequotes has to be joking.

Re: Why airplane bathrooms have ashtrays

#53

Post by yxhuvud »

nicholaides wrote: post #10

I was thinking about this same idea earlier today: Buses in Philadelphia have a bunch of "No Eating and Drinking" signs and consequently no trash cans. The result is that the back of the bus is covered in trash. If they had just 1 or two trash cans it would be a much more pleasant ride.

The solution to that is to make the driver responsible for cleaning his bus, and also to give him the right to eject people that doesn't follow the rules.

Re: Why airplane bathrooms have ashtrays

#54

Post by hasker »

ars wrote: post #48
cameldrv wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do have to pay for air if you care what pressure it is at. Non-Sherpas will demand a refund of their ticket price if provided air at ambient pressure at 35000 ft.

Lets do the math then: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=785+millibars+*+876+cub... Result: Each air change costs around .62 of a gallon of gas (assuming perfect efficiency). Or around $2.50 - let's call it $10 to account for inefficiency. In contrast it costs around $10,000 per hour (not including salary) to fly a large plane. Saying they don't circulate air to save money is ridiculous.

Some would say the same thing about removing in-flight beverage service or tossing blankets, pillows, and airline magazines to save weights, yet airlines do it. I think it is equally ridiculous to care about such costs, especially at the cost of focusing management away from the top line, but using logic to suggest it does not happen may not get you far in this case.

Re: Why airplane bathrooms have ashtrays

#55

Post by seanmcdirmid »

raldi wrote: post #38
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't like the TSA's approach either, but this isn't a very good argument. They stopped disallowing lighters on flights for this reason; they don't want to care about the small threats and focus on finding...you know...terrorists. The change hasn't soaked in completely yet, but their is hope they'll do the right thing eventually. It would be fairly easy to put your fire out with a fire extinguisher. But I'd rather…

Aren't matches still allowed?

If the TSA allows lighters now, I imagine they also allow matches.

Re: Why airplane bathrooms have ashtrays

#56

Post by asparagui »

yxhuvud wrote: post #53
nicholaides wrote: post #10

I was thinking about this same idea earlier today: Buses in Philadelphia have a bunch of "No Eating and Drinking" signs and consequently no trash cans. The result is that the back of the bus is covered in trash. If they had just 1 or two trash cans it would be a much more pleasant ride.

The solution to that is to make the driver responsible for cleaning his bus, and also to give him the right to eject people that doesn't follow the rules.

...and then when the driver of $ethnicityA kicks off a passenger of $ethnicityB, there's a lawsuit and we're back to square one.

Re: Why airplane bathrooms have ashtrays

#58

Post by dalke »

raldi wrote: post #38
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't like the TSA's approach either, but this isn't a very good argument. They stopped disallowing lighters on flights for this reason; they don't want to care about the small threats and focus on finding...you know...terrorists. The change hasn't soaked in completely yet, but their is hope they'll do the right thing eventually. It would be fairly easy to put your fire out with a fire extinguisher. But I'd rather…

Aren't matches still allowed?

Yes, they are. "One book of safety (non-strike anywhere) matches are permitted as carry-on items, but all matches are prohibited in checked baggage."

Even better - matches aren't easily picked up by the X-ray machines.

Re: Why airplane bathrooms have ashtrays

#59

Post by gaius »

mdda wrote: post #27
kgermino wrote: post #6

It seems to be down now. Here's the text if it continues to not work: I’ve been lucky enough to have the chance to fly a lot over the past year or so. Working with Stephen Foskett and the rest of the Tech Field Day crew means that I’ve been to California almost every month. That’s a lot of flying. One of the things that I’ve noticed on my flights is that they don’t want you to smoke. You actually used to be able to s…

The airlines actually save money by preventing smoking : The air in the cabins needs to be recycled less often. The flip side, though, is that air-bourne diseases are more prevalent on flights now, since the air is rebreathed more often before filtering. Source : Qi series 1 (BBC UK).

Uhh, you know QI is a comedy show, right?

Anyway, it's not true. Air in the cabin is bled off the engines, from the early stage of the compressor, then pressurized and heated. It's not one cabinful of air that was in it from the ground endlessly recirculated.

QI also told the world that the Internet uses GPS to route packets (tho' some devices may use GPS for its clock signal, packets don't know geographically where they are).

Re: Why airplane bathrooms have ashtrays

#60

Post by borism »

yxhuvud wrote: post #53
nicholaides wrote: post #10

I was thinking about this same idea earlier today: Buses in Philadelphia have a bunch of "No Eating and Drinking" signs and consequently no trash cans. The result is that the back of the bus is covered in trash. If they had just 1 or two trash cans it would be a much more pleasant ride.

The solution to that is to make the driver responsible for cleaning his bus, and also to give him the right to eject people that doesn't follow the rules.

wow, seriously? are you by chance a congressman or lawmaker of some sorts?
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