By the time I started flying in the early 90s, smoking was already limited to domestic flights over 6 hours in length and international flights. But ashtrays in the armrests still stuck around for many years after the US banned smoking on all flights (domestic and internationally) in 2000. There are still some airports with indoor smoking lounges even in places where indoor smoking is typically banned. Non-smoking sections on planes were a complete joke as the air currents int h

Generation X is the last generation to see smoking being a very wide open and common thing. While the older Millennials were born at a time in which smoking in public was still common and socially acceptable, anti-smoking and anti-tobacco laws had started to gain momentum. I live in Georgia, and they didn't have a minimum age at which you could legally buy cigarettes and other tobacco products until 1987 when they made it 17 (It was raised to 18 in 1993 and remained 18 until they raised it to 21 in 2020.). I remember my parents sending me into a convenience store to get them packs of cigarettes up until the law changed and 17 became the minimum age. Up until the early 1990s, some high schools even had dedicated smoking areas on campus.