I am old enough to remember when people could smoke inside the cinema. There in the darkness, the smokers sat in a section apart from the non-smokers—not that we couldn’t smell the smoke. At that time, nobody knew about the evils of second-hand inhalation.
When I was a kid my grandfather would light up inside his air-conditioned bedroom and it never bothered me.
But as a college student going back and forth Manila-New York and vise versa, I had to sit through plane rides with smoking Japanese businessmen. That I didn’t like. I truly dislike people who smoke in cars and planes.
So in the year 2011, this truly bothers me: Did the President smoke in a PAL plane and is the Palace covering up for it?
Limp-wristed
By Jojo Robles, Manila Standard Today
One of the good things about being President is that you get to bend the rules in your favor, Noynoy Aquino is finding out. Take that very strictly imposed ban on smoking in a commercial airliner, for example.
We’ve been told that during his recent 14-hour return flight on Philippine Airlines flight PR 104 from San Francisco to Manila, Aquino was allowed to smoke in violation of international and local aviation regulations. The feat was pulled off on the PAL 747-400 jumbo jet by simply preventing anyone to go up the upper, first-class deck of the plane (where Aquino was) through the stairs while the President smoked.
However, because the passenger areas of the plane do not really have exhaust vents to remove the scent of tobacco smoke, the smell could not be kept from the other people below. That’s how the other passengers got a whiff (pun intended) of what was going on—including the smokers on board who were displaying the symptoms of full-blown nicotine withdrawal syndrome but who were, unfortunately, not President.
Those who were on the flight could have sworn that Aquino wasn’t the only one smoking. They surmised that the people with Aquino lit up, as well, just to ensure that their boss wouldn’t be breaking civil aviation regulations all by himself.
Health, safety (depending on the stage of the airplane’s trip) and anti-terrorist considerations prohibit smoking in commercial aircraft, of course. But when you’re the chain-smoking President flying the nation’s flag carrier on a long trans-Pacific flight, the skies can be unbelievably friendly.
Originally published at Chuvaness.com. You can comment here or there.