Rananim, when you started flying medicine had not even begun to appreciate the dangers of passive smoking. What you view as 'PC whinging' I, and most others here, view as the basic right of employees to work in a safe and smoke-free environment. How many junior F/Os do you think would have the balls to say 'Rather you didn't' to a senior Captain? It should be the end of it as you say, but is it in practice?
The claim that 'we all did it in the good old days, therefore it must be OK' is complete nonsense. You might as well say it is OK to fly an aircraft blind drunk. Some of the older generation think it's OK to drive home slaughtered on booze because it was previously tolerated. Doesn't mean it was safe.
I find it ludicrous that Ryanair allow this kind of behaviour, and I hope this thread will mean management their get off their backsides and impose and enforce a blanket ban, for all the reasons given earlier - to summarise:
- Health risks to non-smoking flight deck crew
- The unpleasant smell and smoke in the tiny cockpit environment
- The absence of basic CRM in airline Captains who should know better
- The serious fire risks, in a place where fires are at best very dangerous and at worst lethal for hundreds
- The utter hypocrisy of banning all pax from smoking while allowing crew to smoke
- Any pilot who cannot safely perform his duties without nicotine in his veins should not hold a Class 1 (or should I say any pilot who can't fly without taking drugs, since that is what we are talking about)
- Ryanair's risk of being dragged into a multi-million pound litigation over a passive smoking related disease, in which the evidence would have to show only that the illness was
on the balance of probabilities caused by long term exposure to passive smoking at work.
Good luck fmc-apprentice, hope you find that this thread filters back to your bosses. It will, they all read this site. Your unwillingness to speak up in the company context is quite understandable as a junior F/O, so it is fortunate that you have been able to draw attention to this problem anonymously here. Before the internet, I guess these grievances were just not voiced.
Edit - just read the rest of the thread, looks like management have already acted
