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Why airplane bathrooms have ashtrays

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Re: Why airplane bathrooms have ashtrays

#61

Post by megablast »

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 airlines make just over $100 per flight. Not per person per flight, PER FLIGHT. They are looking for every saving they can get.

You can work this out my looking at an an airlines profits, and how many flights they did a year.

Re: Why airplane bathrooms have ashtrays

#62

Post by anghyflawn »

Drbble wrote: post #29
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.

I have never seen a city bus with a trash can.

We have them in Norway

Re: Why airplane bathrooms have ashtrays

#63

Post by derleth »

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…

And Poe's Law strikes again.

On the other hand, yeah, there are people who honestly think that those regulations are a bad idea that bring us farther down the Road to Serfdom and the ultimate death of Western Culture.

Re: Why airplane bathrooms have ashtrays

#64

Post by snowwrestler »

The illustration of the door handle is a great example of piss-poor affordance. A slight ridge is not going to clearly communicate push vs. pull. Especially since our fingers, when gripping, actually like a ridge to fill in the open angle behind the first knuckles.

If you want someone to push, give them a big fat flat metal plate or bar to push on. If they can't pull, they are guaranteed to get it right every time. I bet pretty much every restaurant kitchen and high school gym door in the U.S. gets this right.

Re: Why airplane bathrooms have ashtrays

#65

Post by WalterBright »

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…

Airliners are designed to withstand failure, not to not have any failures. It's a change in perspective, and is very effective.

Both the Fukishima plant and the Deep Water Horizon rig were unable to withstand single failures.

Re: Why airplane bathrooms have ashtrays

#66

Post by rshlo »

ars wrote: post #39
mdda wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

How exactly do they save money by not recycling air? You don't have to pay for air during flight - it comes from the outside air and is free, it's not canisters or something.

I've heard it has something to do with the air filters. Less smoking = less clogging of the filters = less air filters replacement = more money to airlines. Just heard that, don't know if it's true.

Re: Why airplane bathrooms have ashtrays

#67

Post by jasonkester »

snowwrestler wrote: post #64

The illustration of the door handle is a great example of piss-poor affordance. A slight ridge is not going to clearly communicate push vs. pull. Especially since our fingers, when gripping, actually like a ridge to fill in the open angle behind the first knuckles. If you want someone to push, give them a big fat flat metal plate or bar to push on. If they can't pull, they are guaranteed to get it right every time. I…

The door handle could actually be described as an anti-affordance. I looked at the photo and thought to myself what a great idea it was that it gave you a comfortable ridge for your knuckles while pulling and a nice rounded bit (instead of a sharp-edged flat surface) to push on.

That is, it signalled to me the exact opposite of the designer's intended use. I would have been doubly surprised if pulling on that clearly "pull-only" handle didn't open the door.

Re: Why airplane bathrooms have ashtrays

#69

Post by yardie »

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.

Drivers are not conductors and I doing one job is hard enough, now you think they should have 3?

It's probably cheaper to have a trashcan onboard than an armed driver. Yes, when you threaten people with ejection sometimes they threaten you right back.

Re: Why airplane bathrooms have ashtrays

#70

Post by idleloops »

yason wrote: post #41
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…

And enough time goes by without nobody ever seeing a cigarette being smoked midair, the fear of unknown grows (="that isn't normal, what could happen if someone lights a cigarette in an airplane, it could bring the whole plane down!") and then someone freaks out for seeing a pack of cigarettes in someone's pocket, and a few years after that the TSA will require cigarette packs to be removed at the security and kiosks…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7ymGLcbq8A
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