Remember when a transcontinental flight meant free booze, a delicious meal and an after-dinner cigarette? We don't either, but a Belgian company hopes its "electronic cigarette" once again makes lighting up part of the in-flight experience.
SuperSmoker says its electronic cigarette delivers nicotine through tobacco-flavored vapor without the annoying smoke of a true cigarette, which means "this device can't be placed under the smoking prohibition" that bars smoking on flights. The smokeless cigs were launched in Europe last spring, and now SuperSmoker says it is talking to at least one unnamed airline about allowing the battery-powered butts aboard long-haul flights. It also will be showing off the technology at the Aircraft Interiors Expo next month.
As for the company's claim that it's just a matter of time before frequent fliers are able to smoke at 30,000 feet, it's news to the airlines.
Steve Lott of the International Air Transport Association told Wired.com his organization, which represents 230 carriers (that's 93 percent of the industry), hasn't heard of any one negotiating with SuperSmoker.
SuperSmoker has no tobacco and doesn't emit smoke. It's basically a tube containing a vaporization chamber and a cartridge filled with food-derived liquid that produces a tobacco-like flavor. Yum. When a smoker takes a drag, it activates a battery that vaporizes the flavor chamber. It works a lot like the NJOY electronic cigarette. Each replaceable cartridges is equivalent to 15 or 20 cigarettes, and the battery must be recharged every day or two unless you smoke like Amy Winehouse. An LED tells you when the battery is about to die.
With its typo-filled website and cheesy promotional video (below), it would be easy to write off Supersmoker if its electronic cigs weren't selling. You can find them at Harrods, and the supply sold out when they went on sale in Holland in 2007. Ruyun, the world's market leader, says it sold 300,000 of them last year, and electric cigs got a boost in America when they received a thumbs-up on the thoroughly ridiculous daytime talkfest The Doctors.
SuperSmoker and NJOY aren't the first companies trying to profit from nicotine fit-prone passengers. A German entrepreneur announced in 2006 that he was launching a smoke-friendly carrier called Smokers International Airline, or Smitair. It was to be an all business-class affair with plush sleeper seats, good food and flight attendants asking "Kaffee, Tee oder eine Zigarette?" The airline, which never got off the ground, promised on its now-defunct website to "bring back the exclusivity in flying encountered in the
1960s."
Depending on your point of view, the chance to puff away in flight might be a good place to start.
Photo: Flickr/roychung1993
See Also:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=werg0Zjw3dA
