In an unusual pairing of a tobacco brand with a mainstream consumer brand, European e-cigarette maker DanSmoke and low-cost Irish airline Ryanair are teaming up for an advertising campaign.
The airline will feature a DanSmoke "luggage tag" passing as a discount voucher to be printed on millions of boarding passes starting later this month. It seems kind of ironic, however, that Ryanair would partner with a company whose products cannot be used on-board.
Or can they?
On Ryanair's own website it states: "Ryanair do not permit the use of electronic cigarettes on board any of its flights, however smokeless cigarettes can be purchased and used on board." Smokeless cigarettes suggest chewing tobacco but the blog Travel-With-A-Mate noted "The one strange airline to stand out from the crowd is Ryanair … (Smokeless cigarettes) are not e-cigarettes, just simply low nicotine cigarette substitutes that do not need to be lit. This is more likely to be a marketing ploy and a chance to sell overpriced alternatives rather than any health or safety reasons."
Whether that means DanSmoke plan to venture into that line of product remains to be seen. For now, the ruling on e-cigarettes varies from airline to airline, with most of them banning the practice in-flight - the exhaling of e-cigarettes, known as "vaping," still produces smoke - and some not even allowing them to be carried on the plane.
The popularity of them, however, is growing - up almost 5,000 percent to a $1 billion a year business in the United States between 2008 and 2013, and up 6,900 percent in the United Kingdom.
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