Yeah, I flew to London in 1991 in the smoking section, from Logan. Guy I was flying with was a smoker. And then a family of five in smoking section decided they wanted to sit in non-smoking, and somehow the blessed stewardess accommodated them. They shuffled some people in the smoking section back into their seats, and they were on the edge of the smoking section.
Smoking didn’t bother me, but the guy in the seat next to me was a friendly French-Canadian, about 30, drunk as a skunk, who regaled me with photos of the hovels he lived in in the Siberian oil patch where he worked, and of the preternaturally ugly Russian cook, with a smile as big as the steppes and a waist as wide as a T-72.
What a flight. Oh, yeah, we had the obnoxious British twit who wouldn’t turn off his electronics, and the poor Asian American flight attendant imploring him to comply so we could take off, while we sat hostage to his intransigence. Oh, what flight.
I loved getting drunk on transat flights, downing little bitty cognacs, flirting with grandmothers and yakking with people from all over, smoking away with a condom (if only!) and a Swiss Army Knife in my pocket... Honestly with all these rules, is life so much better now?