Katherine Buck was so anxious, she sneaked two drags of a cigarette in an aircraft washroom to calm down.
Unfortunately for her, the passengers waiting in line smelled the smoke when she left the lavatory. A flight attendant found an extinguished butt in the trash and confronted Buck in her seat as the plane flew over the prairies.
"A couple of drags decreased her anxiety so she could continue on that flight," her lawyer Victor Janicki said in court this week. "Her anxiety went right back up when the stewardess told her she breached the regulation."
The pilots smelled the smoke in the cockpit. When the WestJet flight arrived in Kelowna from Toronto, RCMP officers were waiting for her. They took her photo and fingerprints.
The problem wasn't so much the second-hand smoke circulating through the Boeing 737, said Crown counsel Clarke Burnett. It was the risk of fire.
"If you fail to extinguish the cigarette and it's put in the trash, fire on an aircraft is extremely serious," he said. "It's a considerable concern to pilots."
Domestic airlines banned smoking on commercial flights in the 1980s. Buck's case is unusual because lawyers were unable to find a single reported court decision involving an in-flight smoker in Canada.
The maximum penalty for breaching the smoking provision of Canada's Aeronautics Act is a $5,000 fine. Burnett argued for a $500 fine, but Buck lives on a disability pension and can't afford it, said Janicki.
Judge Brad Chapman cited the need to deter others and ordered Buck to complete 40 hours of community work service. He gave her a conditional discharge and placed her on six months' probation.
Buck, 55, lives in Joe Rich. She had travelled to Toronto to visit her 83-year-old mother who was undergoing surgery. She wanted to stay longer when she flew back to Kelowna on Oct. 9, Janicki said.
Buck suffers from post-traumatic stress and chronic back pain. She let the cigarette go out before putting it in the trash. She didn't want to dump it in the toilet in case it reacted with the chemicals, said Janicki.
Buck, who has no record, apologized in court.
"I feel terrible about doing what I did," she said. "It was a stupid thing to do."
WestJet suspended Buck from all its flights, but rescinded the ban when she wrote a letter, Janicki said.