DOT Rule Protects Air Passengers From e-cigarette Aerosol

Over the last few years, DOT has issued historic consumer rules protecting the rights of the flying public.  And today, we took one more step toward ensuring better treatment of passengers by finalizing a rulethat explicitly bans the use of electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) on commercial flights.

The rule applies to all scheduled flights of U.S. and foreign airlines flying in, to, and from the U.S.

While DOT has viewed its current regulatory smoking ban to be sufficiently broad to include the use of e-cigarettes, the prior rule did not explicitly define “smoking.” We took this action to eliminate any confusion between tobacco cigarettes and e-cigarettes by applying the same restrictions to both.