tl;dr – Light him up that cigarette and he’ll strap shoes on his feet.
Recently, on a Spirit Airlines flight, a passenger who appears to be right in that sweet spot between sleeping and awake, sparked one up and proceeded to pull a few drags before being approached by cabin staff. For a brief second, I thought this one was staged (who just sits there and films something like this!), but judging from the actions of at least one nearby passenger and the eventual arrival of the flight attendant, it seems very real. As indicated in the video below, the passenger’s rowmate filmed the incident:
Ok, first things first. Shout out to the passenger across the aisle for progressing through all the stages of incident management here, very emotively, I might add. It’s ripe for some play-by-play:
“Damn, can’t believe I decided to fly Spirit. I told myself never ag…hold on, is that guy lighting up a cigarette?”
“He is! Jeez Louise, I KNEW the airline has gone under, I didn’t think we’d all be next.”
(Looks around.) “This can’t be real. Is anyone else seeing this?”
“So no one else is seeing this? Smelling this?”
(Realizes his rowmate is passed out sleeping in a quasi ‘brace’ position, likely having already assumed Smokey the Bear’s nicotine addiction will inevitably cause the plane’s ‘involuntary descent.’)
“Ok, I guess I have to do everything.”
(Rings the bell and motions for flight attendants to approach. Gently signals to the flight attendant, smoker with body language when the staff shows up.)
And…scene.
As for the smoker himself? Well, given his reaction to being informed that he can’t smoke on the plane, I get the sense he’s a first or near-first-time flier, and simply wasn’t aware of the rules. Definitely looked to be a bit of muscle memory kicking in here.
The guy seemed genuinely remorseful, so here’s hoping there was a calm ending for all parties involved and things didn’t go up in smoke.
