Arrest of Five Cited in Bid to Ban Smoking on Planes

WASHINGTON —  The arrest of five young men for refusing a pilot’s order that they stop smoking in an airliner’s nonsmoking section was cited Saturday by an anti-smoking group as added justification for a government ban on smoking aboard commercial aircraft.

Ahron Leichtman, national president of Citizens Against Tobacco Smoke, a coalition of 42 groups based in Cincinnati, telegraphed Transportation Secretary Elizabeth Hanford Dole to denounce Federal Aviation Administration rules that permit smoking on commercial aircraft flights as “a severe threat to the safety, health, comfort and well-being of all passengers who choose to travel by air.” He urged immediate action to forbid smoking in flight.

Leichtman’s telegram was prompted by an incident that began Wednesday night aboard a USAir jetliner flying from upstate New York cities to Boston. Boston newspaper accounts said five young men who boarded the plane in Buffalo began smoking in the crowded plane’s nonsmoking section. When they ignored the objections of two nonsmokers, attendants summoned the pilot, who was unable to get the smokers to quit. He called Massachusetts State Police when the plane landed.

In East Boston District Court on Friday, the five paid $115 each in court costs under a provision of state law that permits first offenders who pay costs to have their cases continued “without finding” for three months, after which the record is expunged if the defendant has had no more trouble with the law.

In a telephone interview, Leichtman said the necessity to summon the aircraft captain to deal with the matter constituted a diversion of his attention that was “a safety threat to all passengers on board.”

Leichtman said the anti-smoking coalition will press the 100th Congress for new hearings on proposed legislation designed to ban smoking on airliners in flight. The group’s target date for an effective law is next Thanksgiving, he said.